Enhancing Lectures with
Interactive Activities
Elizabeth Malcolm, PhD
Associate Professor of Ocean & Atmospheric Sciences
Department Coordinator, Earth & Environmental Sciences
Why Use In-class Activities?
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Participation by all students
Active learning
Engaging and fun for students
Assess student learning
Easy to incorporate into traditional lecture
• http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/interactive/index.html
“How Am I Doing?”
• Multiple choice questions embedded in presentation
• “Clickers”, or
• Low tech versions: colored index cards or hold up #
fingers corresponding to answer choice
• Quickly assess student learning
– From assigned reading
– After activity or lecture on
difficult concept
Think-Pair-Share
• Easily adaptable to a wide variety of questions and
activities
• Pre-planned or spontaneous
• All students participate
• Instructor can walk around room assessing and
offering assistance
Think-Pair-Share
Examples:
– Write a definition of the greenhouse effect in your own words
– Draw a graph showing how temperature changes with height on a
windy night and calm night
– Label the world map showing where you expect to find fine-grained
lithogenous sediment, coarse-grained lithogenous sediment, and
biogenous sediment
– Conduct a life cycle analysis for gasoline by listing all the potential
environmental impacts from cradle to grave. (Half class does gasoline,
half corn-ethanol & compare)
Think-Pair-Share Example:
Model
How much
will Prediction
temperatures
change in the future?
Model Predictions
Why is there a range
in the predictions?
What factors will
lead to different
rates of warming?
www.ipcc.ch
Free-Write
• Students write continuously for 5 min without
concern for grammar/spelling
• In depth thinking on open ended questions
• Used for self-reflection or application of course
content
• Examples:
– “How comfortable are you with scientific writing? What
are your strengths and weaknesses?”
– “Do you agree with the report that climate change should
be treated as a national security threat by our
government?”
Demos
• Students make a prediction before
• Explain/diagram afterwards
• Examples:
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Cartesian divers (ketchup packet in soda bottle)
solar bags
Bernoulli “wind” bags
air pressure mat
air cannon
groundwater models
www.stevespanglerscience.com/
More Elaborate Activities
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Class discussion of an assigned article in small groups
Class poster session
Gallery walk/walkabout
Jigsaw
For examples see
http://serc.carleton.edu/sp/library/pedagogies.html
Students Sharing Ideas
• Students project graph or diagram w/
document camera
• Students create posters w/ large post-it notes
in class, stick to walls for poster session