I will present my emergent strategy for facilitating collaborative `active learning’ in a large-enrollment, asynchronous online course utilizing Canvas, Panopto, and Zoom. I will briefly share my motivations and guiding principles for fostering active learning (it’s what the students do that matters, fundamentally) in my courses at all academic levels as a means to achieving high-quality and more equitable education. I utilize this approach because there is over 30 years of compelling evidence that active-learning pedagogy increases content mastery and reduces performance gaps, which matches what I experience in my courses. My face-to-face approach has long been ~50% of lecture time devoted to activities designed to engage students in practice and rich discussions with peers related to problem-solving, concept synthesis, and other higher-order cognitive skill development. I find that active-learning implementation that is authentic, frequent, inclusive, and encouraging is key to achieving a high level of student buy-in and active engagement in their learning. This can be achieved through any number of specific methodologies. For large enrollments, I utilize Think-Pair-Share discussion questions which can be easily adapted to asynchronous, collaborative Canvas Discussions.

Session objectives:  participants will be able to

1. Recognize and understand the importance of active learning as a high-impact teaching practice.
2. Implement the use of Think-Pair-Share questions in face-to-face and online courses.
3. Implement the use of Discussions, Groups, and Quizzes in Canvas.

Event Details

Presenter: Daniel H. McIntosh, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy; Director of STEM Education Research

Academic Unit: College of Arts and Sciences; affiliated faculty, Missouri Institute for Defense and Energy

Bio: https://cas.umkc.edu/directory/mcintosh-daniel/

Event format descriptions are available at UMKC PROFFCourses.

Registration Link

After signing up for this event, you will receive an email confirmation. Prior to the event, you will receive a second email containing the Zoom invite link.