2. b) Create active learning experiences & engage learners

Building Your Remote Course

Think about what you want your learners to be able to know or do by the end of your course.  What activities would allow your learner to practice and progress towards that outcome (how can you actively involve learners in the learning process)?

Key Points

  • Activate prior knowledge: Think about how you can help learners connect the ideas you will present and discuss to their previous experiences and/or learning. Positioning your course in relation to what learners already know helps with engagement, knowledge retention, and deeper learning. (e.g. create visuals showing connections between ideas, build in questions that ask learners to think about or share what they know about the subject, begin a course/learning module with prompts like ‘have you ever wondered why…’ that connect the subject matter to familiar experiences).
  • Plan and integrate structured activities where learners engage, think, create and do: Learners should be able to practice skills or complete tasks that will help them become better at what you want them to learn. When planning learning activities think about the time they would put into a face-to-face course and check your expectations in the remote context.
  • Create opportunities for connection and interaction: Build opportunities for connection and interaction into your course design (e.g. have learners create profiles within the course, send a pre-course email survey on interests and goals for the course, have a course lounge, create smaller groups for discussions, assignments).
Synchronous or not?

Learning Experiences

Learn More

A collection of resources designed to give you more information.
USask Winter 2020 Student Feedback

The remote teaching strategies that were really helpful during this crisis were panopto and blackboard submissions. Panopto was awesome. I loved being able to still sit in on live lectures rather than reading posted notes from lectures that should have been presented. It helped me feel like I was caught up, engaged, and not falling behind.

The instructor posted all of our notes and powerpoints as well as created a discussion board so we are able to comment and talk about today's lecture and answer questions based on it. This still gives us a chance to interact with one another and read what others are saying about the material.

The online conference in place of the inperson critique was successful and an interesting new way to see the work of others.

The discussion boards were actually a good tool to learn from my peers and get additional perspective on textbook materials.

My instructor was vocal about research she had done on how to effectively engage learners through remote online teaching strategies and her class was the most positive experience that I had using the format. For example, one class had students respond to questions with sliding scale responses via text that worked very well and kept everyone engaged and active in the conversation. Overall, my instructors use of [Web conferencing tool] and screen sharing was done very well and I felt as if she adapted very quickly and efficiently to the circumstance that we were all placed in.