Learning design

Activities

Activities are an important tool to help facilitate your learners’ understanding of the subject and should not be viewed as simply a ‘filler’. They are also a useful way to integrate formative assessment into your course content. 

Writing activities

With each activity you create you should consider including:

• a number and heading
• a suggested time that the learner should spend on it
• an activity question – a set of clear, sequential instructions to scaffold the activity task
• the answer to the question or a discussion about the issues it raises, as appropriate – this should refer specifically to the content of the activity and should not make any new teaching points, which can be developed instead in the main text that follows the activity.

With each activity you design you should:

• consider breaking down general questions into easy stages (perhaps with feedback for each one) and offering a relatively straightforward ‘first stage’ (e.g. a concrete rather than an abstract task)
• be precise about the task(s) involved to guide learners towards the correct response – it is helpful if questions are laid out clearly (e.g. with bullet points)
• ensure that the feedback clearly corresponds to the task design – so if the activity features a list of questions, for example, each one should be answered in the same order
• avoid activities that rely on the learners' interpretations or opinions rather than 
• consider asking learners to examine visual data and describe what they perceive – this give useful practice in analytical skills.

Activity types

What will you ask your learners to do?

There are several types of activities, each listed in the following table. Depending on the circumstances of how your learners will use your course, some activities might work better than others offline – if your course was complementing an existing class, for example. The table includes links to parts of the guidance that might best serve you making each type of activity.