| Main Resources | http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/; https://www.edglossary.org; http://dlrtoolkit.com |
| Active learning | Is an approach to teaching which involves students in the learning process . It proposes a more student-centred teaching approach than traditional modes of instruction at the post-secodnary level such as lectures or memorization. It is generally considered to contribute to better cognitive outcomes, but does not impact student mastery of the class material (Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith M.K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H. & Wenderoth, M.P., 2011). It can refer to a combination or collection of other strategies where students are invovled such as collaborating, application of knowledge within tasks, or problem-solving. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111 |
| Artefact analysis | an artefact (physical or 3D modeled) is used as the learning prompt by which learners provide insight and information. Students may be asked to begin by formulating a hypothesis about the artefact and proceeding to explore it or the literature pertaining to it to advance their understanding. https://www.edglossary.org/capstone-project/ |
| Capstone project or capstone course/class, culminating experience, senior exhibit, etc… | A learner-centered project undertaken over time and with undersupervision to demonstrate ability, engagement, and knowledge of a topic or single inquiry or research trajectory within a topic of study. It is often summative in nature. It requires the student to direct a substantive portion of their own learning and evoking decision-making on their part. It is a high-impact practice that is considered to present learners with challenge, skill-development, and intrinsic rewards. Such projects or courses or exhibits emulate the scholarship or research cycle of professionals while offering learners support and feedback throughout. |
| Case study | A problem or situation or simulation based on an example from “real-life” outside of the academy. It is intended to provide an opportunity for students to develop skills (e.g. practical, critical thinking, collaboration, communication) through exploring a situtaion or problem they might encounter in a professional or personal context but within the safe and low-stakes context of a class. Often used in conjunction with formative feedback so students can learn from the experience. |
| Challenge bank (https://splot.ca/splots/ds106-assignment-bank/) | This is a resource that collects incorrectly answered questions from tests, quizzes, and problems to offer learners a subsequent opportunity to articulate their learning. It may be used to inform learners and their instructors of what skills or knowledge are not yet acquired by learners. It can be employed to reinforce concepts by providing additional opportunities for learners to practice, demonstrate, or guess the proper responses and to to populate summative tests or . |
| Close Reading | The subsequent analysis of a written text that elicits a learner’s substantuated interpretations of the main meaning, subtext, and form. |
| Collaborative writing, peer feedback/review | Learners contribute collectively to a composite product. Collaborative writing may happen sequentially or asynchronously. It may be accompanied by explicit or tacit peer review and editing. |
| community-engaged/engagement | This instructional approach connects students to issues and activities that originate with the community beyond the class context. It can involve students using data provided by community agencies or groups, or provide opportunities for contact with the community through events or interactions. Care should be taken to avoid conflicts or ethical dilemmas when facilitating community and student interactions. |
| Contemplative pedagogy | The considered approach to teaching and learning that sets to establish and pursue a thoughtful, focused and calm state of mind and emotional modulation among learners. it is frequently used to foment reflection across a learner’s cognitive and affective domains. This approach offers an alternative to pedagogical customs which impose overly dynamic and multi-sensory stimulation. https://ctl.columbia.edu/resources-and-technology/resources/contemplative-pedagogy/; https://contemplativepedagogynetwork.com/what-is-contemplative-pedagogy/ |
| Collaborative | With this approach, learners work with others. Usually, this means learners work with peers within a learning context. Within collaborative learning, there are various subsets including teamwork, group work, and cooperative learning. However, it can also refer to students who work with others as part of a lab, with community members, experts or scholars of other levels. Importantly, learners may collaborate for various purposes including to reduce the assessment investment needed by the grader, tutor, or instructor. Of particular interest in cooperative learning, learners work together in an intentional way such that the learning can only be progressed by involving more than one perspective or role. |
| Cooperative experience | This learning refers to a situation where a learner undertakes responsibilities akin to employment or an internship at an employer or agency beyond the instructional setting while the learning and development is still subject to the purview of an educational program. The learner may continue to have access to academic instruction and supervision and might progress in their knowledge and abilities according to planned learning outcomes and with some mode of assessment imposed and credit granted by the academic institution. It may be a paid or unpaid experience. |
| Create activities (lab, app, | This activity describes how learners can be inspired to or tasked with building upon something using existing and novel ideas or by by being invited to render a new or composite tool using creativity and synthesis. The focus may be on skill acquisition, prior knowledge activitation, or aesthetics or originality. It may be used as a formative or summative technique,or a combination of both, for assessing learners. |
| Critical incidents | Incidents of professional behaviour, including those resulting in errors, are described and analyzed in a classroom setting so that learners can reflect on, discuss, think critically and generally learn from and inform their behaviour and avoid any actions that could result in replicating errors or problematic events in the future. Often these descriptive events/incidents are used in professional studies such as health care or justice where stakes may be high and margin of errors costly. |
| Debate | This learning technique positions learners across two or more opposing views and has them discuss or defend one or both sides. It may or may not follow traditional legal or debate tenets with turn-taking and protocols. |
| Discussion | A socio-constructivist technique where learners talk to one another, whether or not according to any protocols (e.g. debate, compare and contrast) to reflect, explore and share meaning and understanding. It is often overutilized without sufficient scaffolding or clear protocols or outcomes for learners. May be counterproductive, or require indpendent reflection first, for learners who exhibit preferences who typically exhibit introversion in learning contexts. |
| Exhibits | With this activity, learners create a visual product or representation (prototype) or series of products/materials/items indicative of the learning to visually represent or showcase to others within a course or to a wider audience. |
| Experiential learning | This approach to teaching and learning refers to a suite of activities that involve students having experiences that may be richer than more passive or traditional forms such as reading or passively attending a lecture or viewing slides. In essence, experiential learnign should offer learners a phenomenological experience. It may include projects, group work, moving across environments such as study abroad, or community-engaged, or place-based learning, or exposure to materials found beyond the classroom or lab: people, places, evidence, and data |
| Facilitation / facilitator | |
| Field trip/field experience | An excursion where a learner or class physically moves beyond the usual learning context (classroom or lab) to acquire knowledge or skills, or to generall promote or reinforce learning that can be better acquired elsewhere. Is is related to place-based or land-based pedagogy. It may also indicate a fulsome learning experience where a learner spends substantial time learning elsewhere and even under the purview or supervision of an external resource or expert such as with a community-based organization, in a clinical experience, or nature-based venue. |
| Graphic analysis | |
| Guest speaker, invited expert | Even when a guest follows a traditional lecture format, they are likely to elicit more learner engagement by virtue of the rarity of the event of having a guest speaker or expert, and the uniquenes of their visit and particular approach to deliver the content. It can be especially engaging if the guest is an expert, has some renown, is delivering content taht cannot otherwise be accessed, or when they are in possession of dynamic public speaking qualifications. |
| Interactive | |
| Interactive media | |
| Internship | Like a cooperative experience, this learning refers to a situation where a learner undertakes responsibilities for an employer beyond the instructional setting. The learner is likely to continue to have access to academic liaising and is still working toward program credit. |
| Interviews | Whether called on as an activity because it relates to the discipline or practice (e.g. clinical skills, taking patient history, journalism) interviews are an interactive learning technique. Note, depending on the scope, using interviews may require advance consultations and even formal ethical approval from institutional research ethics board. Learners may interview each other, access existing interviews to collect and synthesize information, or interview community members (with ethical approval). |
| jigsaw, close | A lively learning technique wherein learners, in groups, possess different but interrelated information. As collaborative groups, they then exchange the information. This technique provides collaborative learning because it encourages learners to present and synthesize information within their groups |
| Journaling, reflective (photo voice) | |
| Labs; experimentation | |
| Lecture | the traditional university lecture is a loosely organized oral presentation on a topic of expertise by the reader/lecturer/professor. This is a passive learning with students relying on auditory listening skills and an ability to connect existing knowledge with the presented information. Students often, but not always, take their own notes during lectures. Increasingly, lecture notes are provided and accompany the presentation. |
| Logging, illustration, | Students keep a log and input and track their feelings, ideas, and strategies for learning or a topic through words or illustrations. Logging, or illustrating (see concept mapping) can reinforce for learners the content, their comprehension, and facilitate for them and their instructors what challenges and opportunities exist and how learning connects across time and topics exist while activating affect and practicing writing or drawing techniques. |
| Mapping (concept, or other) | Mapping is a method of illustrating concepts and depicting their links and relationships visually. Georgia Tech Visual Mapping Pedagogical Purpose visual https://www.ctl.gatech.edu/node/582111. For curriculum mapping, see https://edta.info.yorku.ca/curriculum-mapping/. |
| Memorization (mnemonics) | Memorization and mneumonics are technqiues where students formulate and impose easy-to-recall methods for ideas or systems that contain many parts, or which are complex in other ways. Ideally, these techniques elicit and evoke short-term and long-term recall and cognition. |
| Multimedia | This is a technique that involves offering learners more than one kind of input and that elicits more than one kind of sense. Traditionally, the technique refers to utilizing information using audio and vidual or otherwise dynamic renderings such as recordings, displays -including 3D and sensory, diarama, exhibits, or software, and computerized programs. |
| Passive- inanimate | An increasingly popular learning approach that uses geography to connect students to content and learning. It is a subcategory of experiential learning and can combine geography with any other elements including socio-political, humanist, or biological interpretations. It can be related to Indigenous ways of knowing and T&L. |
| Place-based | A means of learning that exposes learners to the specifics of a location, it’s geographic and natural attributes, and/or its localized political, demographic, and socio-cultural features. Place-based activities and approaches is especially valuable in some disciplines (geography, cultural studies) and in Indigeneous and Aboriginal pedagogies. |
| Portfolios | A tool used to collect and track evidence of learning over time. It can be used for learners to identify and reflect on progress with or without instructor input. Can be used for formative or summative assessment purposes, to link learning in one setting with another or to situate learning and developing skills and abilities in relation to other activities such as volunteer roles, employment, civic engagement. |
| Practice; technical | Once a skill or suite of skills has been demonstrated, or taught by an expert, a learner can carry out a practical or technical experience to employ and to hone the skill in a simulated context or a real context with adequate oversight and feedback to be able to improve over time. |
| Presentation | Like a lecture, a presentation is traditionally delivered orally by a person with some level of familiarity or expertise on the topic. It may be accompanied by audio or visual imformation or may be delivered asynchronously or virtually. |
| Prior knowledge activation (& PLAR) | A learning technique (prior knowledge activiation) that elicits or ascertains a learner’s existing knowledge in order to subsequently build on it; a means by which a learner’s prior knowledge and/or existing ability is ascertained (PLAR). Prior Learning Assessment and Recogniztion may be a pre-required stage and certification a learner is subjected to before proceeding to participate in a training program or course for which some base of knowledge or ability is deemed essential. |
| Project, inquiry | An open-ended learning approach that requires learners complete several steps over time. It is recognized as a means of eliciting greater engagement and activating learner skills including critical thinking (problem-solving) and sythesisis. More onous is on the learner although it may happen as independent or collaborative work. It works bets when some instructional scaffolding and timelines are in place and enforced, and itmay be better for learners with some existing skills including motivation, discipline, time management and the ability to work without immediate rewards. |
| Quizzes, quizlets | An assessment tool that is generally less substantive or summative than a test or exam. It may encapsulate a particular module, concept, or subset of learning for which students are responsible. Often used to ascertain student learning as a means of formative value with time within a timeframe where students still have time left to relearn/reteach, or to have the learning reinforced or repeated before continuing. |
| Reading | A learner extricates the symbols and meaning of a written language to advance their knowledge and develop skills, including comprehension, critical thinking, and analysis. It is used in some disciplinear (humanities) as the main means of learning. A reading may also be presented orally or via multi-media. It is more autodidactic and traditionally less active than other means. However, it is usualy paired with other active learning techniques like discussion and writing. |
| Research proposal | |
| Role play (scenarios) | A learning experience wherein learners collaborate in a social-setting by inhabiting the behaviour or perspectives of someone else. |
| Self-study | This is an autodidactic mode wherein a learner sets one or more of their own goals and pace and methods for learning content, skills, or a module within or outside of a program of study usually with readily available resources such as online materials and books. It implies no direct supervision and no adherance or tracking of attendance. It is often associated with learners who are preparing for summative exams or for those participating in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). When it is the main mode of learning (not during episodes of exam preparation), it does not typically result in grades or credit unless PLAR is undertaken [see PLAR]. |
| Simulatation | Premised on the ways in which learners can demonstrate learning and knowledge by presenting on it to peers or to the instructor. This is a means by which course content can also be populated or co-contstructed or curated by learners actively involved in locating information and developing skills to synthesise and format information in a way that other learners can benefit. |
| Socratic questioning | This approach is premised on viewing learners as in possession of knowledge and value that can be employed to activate and build learning and skill development. It may entail learners articulating what’s known or been experienced before the new content or skill development is engaged, or the instructor utilizing or activiating prior knowledge and ability, or building an inventory of learner traits from which to extend learning and growth. |
| Strengths-based | This instructional approach connects students to issues and activities that originate with the community beyond the class context. It can involve students using data provided by community agencies or groups, or provide opportunities for contact with the community through events or interactions. Care should be taken to avoid conflicts or ethical dilemmas when facilitating community and student interactions. |
| Student centered | This approach may refer to instruction, curriculum and course design, or both, and it refers to focusing design and instruction on the needs of the learner. |
| Study abroad | A means by which a learner travels to a distant geopolitical location to participate in and to learn in an educative program or event. It is often used in higher education to indicate a subset of study within a program or program experienced beyond the borders of a learner’s original location. It may or may not involve the learner functioning (learning and living) in a language or languages that are not the learner’s regular means of communication. It may mean exposure to a foreign cultural and range of practices including educative traditions. It is widely recognized as highly productive yet often challenging. |
| Textual Analysis | Refers to activities that facilitate learners engaging with research processes, scientific thinking, and/or original contributions to a field. This approach overlaps with other appraoches including experiential learning. It stimulates critical thinking, analysis, and may involve students generating researchable quesions, investigating and learning using the tools or methodologies of a disciopline, and/or presenting or showcasing their findings in a colleagial fashion which emulates that of professional researchers. |
| Undergraduate research | |
| Video | Refers to activities that facilitate learners engaging with research processes, scientific thinking, and/or original contributions to a field. This approach overlaps with other appraoches including experiential learning. It stimulates critical thinking, analysis, and may involve students generating researchable quesions, investigating and learning using the tools or methodologies of a disciopline, and/or presenting or showcasing their findings in a colleagial fashion which emulates that of professional researchers. |
| Writing: literature review, essay, composition, annotated bibliography, poem, creative writing, reflective, code | |
| Flipped | Flipped learning stands in contrast to traditional lecture presentations [see above]. In flipped classroom or modules, learners are responsible for acquiring content or skills prior to arriving to the class or lab. This in-advance learning will then be activited and utilized during class activities. It improves student engagement by employing auto-didactic skills, and using class or lab time to progress and build on the learning, often in social-constructive ways. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/flipped-learning-0 |
| Learning communities | In higher education, where traditional teaching and learning has relied on lectures and independent note-taking across an often disparate set of classes learners take in distinct disciplines, learning communities group learners across multiple, sometimes linked classes, and support the learner groups to make connections between the topics. Learning communities establish and foster a sense of community and of belonging among participating learners. Communities are typcially facilitated by more advanced, academic guides or scholars, and often include additional attention and referrals to academic skill development. Especially in light of large class sizes and less-personalized learnng experiences in established insitutions of higher education, learners participating in learning communities fare better. The results are especially impressive for learners from socio-economic and cultural backgrounds previously exluded from accesson higher education. |
| Work integrated learning | Like a cooperative experience of internship, this learning refers to a situation where a learner undertakes responsibilities for an employer beyond the instructional setting. The learner is likely to continue to have access to academic liaising and is still classified as a student although they are gaining direct experience with an employer. This is typcially a direclty remunerated and in situ superized endeavour that will furnish the learner with the opportunity to explore their career options, develop their professional identity and network. Such a supervised work experience can result in verifiable work experience for their resume and potentially a professional reference for the purposes of future job searching. The remuneration may be subsidized and work-integrated learning does not typically graded nor do they usually result in academic credit. https://www.cewilcanada.ca/ |
