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Explore Teaching Strategies
Many teaching strategies can be implemented effectively using digital technologies, and the use of technologies can promote active learning by enabling instructors to
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address a range of learning styles,
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encourage practice and reflection,
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provide opportunities for feedback, and
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motivate students.
For instance, you can use technology-enhanced learning activities to reinforce information from a lecture, get feedback about what students do or don't understand, introduce active learning into a large lecture course, or facilitate good writing.
When we engage higher-order thinking, an extraordinary pattern of neural networks is activated in the brain. Teachers are well aware of the disconnect that occurs when students are asked to translate these complex and holistic patterns into linear thinking—for instance, when we ask them to generate a thesis or write an essay. Mind-mapping learning activities can help. You can use a variety of hardware and software, or our mind-mapping learning object, to have your students produce and present mind maps.
Familiarity with the vocabulary used in a course is a fundamental pre-requisite for understanding and processing course content. How do students develop the language used by experts in a field? How can instructors facilitate the process? One way is through the use of instructor- or student-created course glossaries. Instructors can use the Moodle course management system's Glossary activity to create and enable students to access a course glossary.
Current research supports the notion that having personal choices can have positive and motivational affects on individuals. This is true as well when students, either individually or as a group, are allowed to make choices about what and how they will learn in a particular course. Instructors must often cover specific content in a set amount of time, but they may be able to provide students with limited choices. One way to do this is with the Moodle course management system's Choice activity.
It is very useful to teach students how to find resources in the real world. To do so, instructors often ask students to find or critique resources (books, journals, Web sites, etc.) about a specific subject and hand them in for review. Instructors can use the Moodle course management system's Database activity to create resource sharing learning activities.
Self-assessment and peer review activities can foster students' cognitive transition from neophyte to expert by providing metacognition and elaboration opportunities. In addition to these cognitive benefits, appropriately structured peer review and self-assessment activities can help students learn professional standards and practices and afford opportunities to apply them in realistic settings. Instructors can use the Moodle Workshop tool to support robust peer review and/or self-assessment activities, as well as cycles of feedback on—and revision of—student work.
