Strategies for increasing and maintaining active learner involvement are important to establishing an effective classroom. Students who are actively involved in learning activities benefit more from learning time.
Anzhela, I'm glad you are embracing the fundamentals of successful teaching.
Michele Deck
Student response is very important. Because
in this way the instructor can evaluate a student , that a student is intersted/ learning.
Generally well received. It is important to have everything figured out and prepared in advance. I believe students lose interest quickly if they see you trying to figure out how to proceed or are waiting for you to "make" the game. If you have everything you need and can make the transition from lecture to activity without delay, they tend to keep the level of credibility of the activity in high regard.
Bethanne, I agree and know that students can tell when their instructors are unprepared for class without any words said.
Michele Deck
One of the techniques that you discussed, The Ball Toss, has been both successful, and easy to implement for a variety of subjects, and has enjoyed a very positive response.
With regard to medical terminology, it has been particularly useful when you call upon a given person, and have them state either the definition for a word, or the word, it response to definition that you've read.
Another approach that I've used, involves having the students stand and point to the part of their body that corresponds with a word or word part. This of course works best with clearly tangible structures, rather than processes and conditions. For some conditions, you can use a charades approach, and have the student act out the condition (For example urticaria or ataxia which usually gets a few good laughs.
Dr. Jonathan French
Jonathan, thank you for sharing how you have applied the ball toss to the medical terminology content. It definitely keeps your students thinking!
Michele Deck
Thank you so much for the game ideas. I have very long lectures and the students (and myself) need a way to get moving to prevent boredom!
stacy, you are welcome. I hope you implement at least one of these into your classes.
Michele Deck
Any game played in class is always well accepted by students...educational or not they respond in positive form to a non-normal class day...
Nicolas, I love your term, "non-normal class day." It's funny how little has to change to reengage learners.
Michele Deck
I have found that having the students perform the task helps a lot.
For example, when I have them learn how to give injections, I will actually take a student and have them give me an injection. By watching my response, and how I direct the student to give it, they learn more than just lecture. They also can see it isn't as scary as they think. Then, when they practice it, they will be able to apply what they saw, not just what they heard once.
I have used "Jeopardy" questions in the past - I will give questions to students and they will work in small groups to win. The students really become engaged, because they want to get the questions the other group couldn't answer, or they want to make sure they get the higher point prizes to win. It has helped when reviewing for an exam.
I also find giving the students some choices helps as well. When I taught biology lab, I gave the students choices to do a semester long project. They really liked picking their own choice, making their own decisions on what would happen, and applying their knowledge from the class on scientific method to their project. This was one of the favorite ways of learning for a lot of students.
Melannie, giving learners a choice gets them to buy in to the lesson and to have a degree of personal control as well.
Michele Deck
Using differents activities during the class provides a lot of good fedback from the students , they are more animated and tend to retain the material in an easier way.
We've have used the jeopardy game and flip charts in the past . But I'm very interested in using some of the activities that are listed. Always looking for new ideas.
Bridgette, if you are always looking for new successful teaching strstegies, you will be a great educator!
Michele Deck
I agree that students enjoy participating in activities, although I have had some groups that get VERY competitive, taking some of the fun away.
Susan, it is not fun when cut throat competition happens. When that happens, I change groups and reward systems.
Michele Deck
I have been using quizlet.com and my students really love it! There is a portion called "scatter" and they get a chance to compete with their classmates. I feel their grades have improved tremendously since using it. They also enjoy Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire activities.
Larry, I test from the homework. If they do the homework they will do well on the test. I also require them to write out questions as well as answers to the homework so they associate concepts correctly. I explain that doing their homework correctly, using it as a study tool, is better than any study guide I've tried in the past.
Sadly, answers are in the back of most of my textbooks, some will cheat. My policy, stated the first day and given as a homework rubric, is that if they only answer the questions that have answers in the back of the book their grade will be 70% or less. They can choose the easy way or choose to excel.
I've tried homework handouts in several quarters, also testing only from the homework. Their retention was very poor as evidenced by their lack of recall in future classes.
Doing it this way for three quarters has proven to have increased recall for basic building blocks of terminology.
I don't expect them to learn every tiny little disease/term. I do expect them to learn prefixes, suffixes, word roots. I will use them a lot more than 6 times so they have the basics to build from, break down words with.
