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Informational, Active and Collaborative Learning Activities

In this learning activity, we will introduce you to informational, active, and collaborative learning activities. We list some examples, advantages, and disadvantages for each and invite you to start thinking about which activity types might work well in your course.  Alignment with course objectives continues to be important because your activities will provide the necessary learning or practice that lead to fair and valid assessment.

Selecting Appropriate Learning Activities

We now consider the learning activities for your course.

“As with other educational design, creating effective e-learning relies on having tasks for students to undertake that provide an experience likely to lead them to the desired new understanding. Despite the apparent obviousness of this requirement, it seems all too easy for providers of e-learning to become carried away with, or distracted by, other design elements and to overlook the necessity of providing a rich learning activity. A rich activity is one that opens up opportunities for action rather than directs students down a prescribed pathway” (Brown and Voltz, 2005, para. 8).

In this seminar, we will use three broad categories to help you consider the purpose of your learning activity: informational, active, and collaborative. The following descriptions and examples of learning activities will help you see how different learning activities may be classified into these three categories. Since no single type of learning activity will work for every type of learning objective, we will also consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of each category. Please note that each type of learning activities is “appropriate” as long as it helps the student achieve the learning objective(s).

Informational Learning Activities

Informational learning activities present important information to individuals in an efficient way. For example, they may require students to read a chapter in a textbook, review pages on a website, view a presentation, or to think about what is being presented.

Examples

• • Readings
  • Slide presentations
  • Narrated or recorded lectures
  • Podcasts
  • Video clips
  • Orienting activities
  • Illustrations
  • Visual organizers
  • Content previews
  • Structured overviews
  • Worked examples

Advantages

• • Efficiently presents a large volume of foundational knowledge
  • Provides students a “mental break” from more intensive learning activities
  • Is familiar to students from past learning experiences
  • Is most familiar to many faculty and students
  • Often provided in textbook or publisher resources

Disadvantages

• • Students may perceive the information or activity as boring or irrelevant
  • Often no sure way to know whether students have actually read, listened, or viewed the activity
  • External resources may include extraneous or distracting information that make it difficult for student to recognize the intended points

Active Learning Activities

Active learning activities require students to independently solve problems or create products. In some cases, such activities are opportunities for students to practice skills and apply knowledge previously learned. In other cases, they are opportunities to discover or make sense of knowledge not previously presented. In active learning, students also develop the meta-cognitive skills they need to direct their own learning of the subject matter and the acquisition of skills.

Examples

• • Questions on assigned reading
  • Simulations
  • Games & puzzles
  • Research or creative projects
  • Case studies and other problem-solving activities
  • Weekly problem sets
  • Compare-and-contrast exercises
  • Drill and practice
  • Writing assignments both shorter and longer
  • Blogging or journaling
  • Digital storytelling
  • Concept mapping

Advantages

• • Provides the context that helps students recognize the relevance of the learning
  • Promotes better retention of learning
  • Deepens understanding and enhances students’ ability to transfer knowledge to “real-life” situations
  • Engages the student more
  • Increases student ability to direct their own learning
  • Fosters cognitive and meta-cognitive processing

Disadvantages

• • May require more consideration and thinking through than informational activities for the instructor to prepare well
  • Less efficient than informational learning for presenting foundational knowledge
  • May be frustrating for students who are not prepared to participate

Collaborative Learning Activities

Collaborative learning activities involve two or more students working together to complete a common task, project or solve a problem. This type of learning activity promotes positive interdependence, which means that students cannot divide and conquer the activity but must truly interact with each other to complete it successfully.

Examples

• • Group case studies or projects
  • Discussions
  • Role-playing
  • Cooperative games
  • Wiki study guides
  • Web conferencing sessions

Advantages

• • Increases the knowledge base students can access
  • Incorporates a variety of skills, abilities, and perspectives
  • Can reduce workload in assessing student work
  • Develops teamwork skills

Disadvantages

• • May require students to coordinate meetings, communication, and other logistics
  • Sometimes difficult to fairly and accurately assess students’ efforts, both individually and collaboratively

Providing a Variety of Activities

Best practices suggest that a mix of activities will help you address a variety of learning objectives, as well as to help promote interaction of students with each other, with you as an instructor, and with the content. Providing a variety of learning activities can infuse your course with diverse viewpoints about the subject matter and help students use multiple approaches to understanding the course content.

The continuum of learning activities, from informational to collaborative, is not a continuum from worse to better. Each type of learning has its advantages, and you will want to carefully select an appropriate mix of informational, active, and collaborative learning activities for your course. As stated previously, an “appropriate” mix will be one that helps students achieve the learning objectives of the course. One activity type may be better than the others for accomplishing particular objectives. In some cases, you may even build more effective learning experiences if you combine or interleave (switch back-and-forth) the various types of learning activities. In the online environment, it is important to use appropriate strategies that effectively engage students in the learning process, as such engagement can greatly increase their depth of understanding and motivation to learn. Online students will benefit from learning activities that give them an opportunity to actively participate, share their thoughts, and develop ideas over longer periods of time. They will also have higher levels of achievement if you provide opportunities to think critically about their participation and consider ways they can direct their own learning.

Another reason to use a mix of learning activities is to ensure appropriate opportunities for the various types of interaction that we have mentioned previously: student-to-content, student-to-student, and student-to-teacher. Consider the activities in this seminar again. Can you see how each type of seminar activity listed below involves one or more types of interaction?

1. Readings, Videos

Type of Activity: Informational

Type of Interaction: Student-to-Content (S-C)

Details: In the seminar content, we present the instructional design principles and strategies to help you effectively design your course.

2. Course Design Map Design Tasks

Type of Activity: Active

Type of Interaction: Student-to-Content, Student-to-Teacher (S-C, S-T)

Details: Writing out your design plans in your Course Design Map helps you apply what you are learning from the content readings before you start developing your course (student-to-content interaction). The instructional design consultants also provide feedback on your various design documents to identify the options available to you and help clarify your design decisions (student-to-teacher interaction).

3. Discussion Forums

Type of Activity: Collaborative

Type of Interaction: Student-to-Content, Student-to-Teacher, Student-to-Student (S-C, S-T, S-S)

Details: The weekly group discussions during the first half of the seminar are a type of Collaborative activity in which your peers offer feedback about topics and issues that will help you refine your work (S-S).

Let’s now revisit the importance of integrating interaction in an online course. You may recall that Boise State wants to ensure our fully online courses comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). The HEOA distinguishes online courses by the presence of interaction between students and teachers, as well as students and other students. Such interaction not only helps to keep students involved in the course, it also promotes retention in their program of study. This, in turn, can result in a higher likelihood that students will graduate. In a nutshell: Interaction encourages Motivation, which encourages Learning, which leads to Success.

You may find the following resources a useful snapshot of ideas for teaching and learning strategies, technology tools, and assessments that may be used to achieve particular kinds of objectives:

Boettcher-Conrad Course Design Guide – A handout based on the work of Boettcher and Conrad’s (2004) book Faculty Guide for Moving Teaching and Learning to the Web

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels of Learning Wheel – An illustration created by Emily Hixon of Purdue University Calumet

Transparent Assessment Design

Instructor guidance has a significant impact on student confidence, motivation, and achievement. To learn more, please visit this Transparent Assessment Design blog post by Laurel Willingham-McLain. Transparent Assessment Design principles apply to most online learning activities. Try to focus students’ energy with clear statements of the purpose, relevance and big picture learning objectives they are expected to meet.

Activities that Meet Quality Matters Standards

Meeting Quality Matters Standards

To ensure constructive alignment among objectives, assessments, and learning activities, let’s review some related Quality Matters standards. As you read the following standards, consider how the standards in bold print may be applied to the design of your course.

General Standard 5 – Learner Activities and Learner Interaction

5.1 The learning activities promote the achievement of the stated learning objectives or competencies.

5.2 Learning activities provide opportunities for interaction that support active learning.

5.3 The instructor’s plan for classroom response time and feedback on assignments is clearly stated.

5.4 The requirements for learner interaction are clearly stated.

General Standard 6 – Course Technology

6.1 The tools used in the course support the learning objectives and competencies.

6.2 Course tools promote learner engagement and active learning.

6.3 Technologies required in the course are readily obtainable.

6.4 The course technologies are current.

6.5 Links are provided to privacy policies for all external tools required in the course.

General Standard 7 – Learner Support

7.1 The course instructions articulate or link to a clear description of the technical support offered and how to obtain it.

7.2 Course instructions articulate or link to the institution’s accessibility policies and services.

7.3 Course instructions articulate or link to an explanation of how the institution’s academic support services and resources can help learners succeed in the course and how learners can obtain them.

7.4 Course instructions articulate or link to an explanation of how the institution’s student services and resources can help learners succeed and how learners can obtain them.

General Standard 8 – Accessibility and Usability

8.1 Course navigation facilitates ease of use.

8.2 Information is provided about the accessibility of all technologies required in the course.

8.3 The course provides alternative means of access to course materials in formats that meet the needs of diverse learners.

8.4 The course design facilitates readability.

8.5 Course multimedia facilitate ease of use.

Take a moment now to think about how these standards may be applied to the design of your learning activities. You may want to ask yourself questions like:

• What kind of information will you provide to students in the learning activity directions?
• How will students interact with you, the instructor, to receive feedback on assignments?
• How will students interact with each other to provide feedback and support active learning?
• How can you incorporate tools and technologies that will allow persons with disabilities to actively participate in the learning activities?

Note that we will delve into media and accessibility concerns in more detail during the development phase of the seminar, but it is helpful to consider the above standards as you design your learning activities.

Conclusion

In this section, we introduced the use of informational, active, and collaborative learning activities in an online course environment. Appropriate learning activity selection requires careful consideration of situational factors, the learning objective being addressed, and the overall blend of activities that learners will experience in your course. We reviewed the importance of including the three types of student learning interactions in our design, and even go so far as to include the S-C, S-S, S-T notation behind each activity in our course design map.

Next, please select the link below to complete the check for understanding exercise. You may then proceed to the design task that follows, in which you will plan a single learning activity for your course. Remember, the instructional design process is iterative, and it is important to keep the principle of continual course improvement in mind. Even if you have already written directions for an activity that you have included in your course in the past, please review the information on your Course Design Map and think about how the activity might be improved by applying the perspectives offered above and the Quality Matters standards.