Different activities for learning

Introduction

Not all training courses delivered in the voluntary and NGO sectors have formal written learning outcomes but even if the courses you are working on do not, you probably still have an idea of key concepts and skills that each course aims to cover.

The activities that participants take part in during training sessions play a crucial role in helping them to develop these skills and knowledge. This section discusses some of the different types of activities that can be used to help participants learn in an online course.

The flipped classroom

In traditional training, the trainer possesses the required knowledge about the topic and tries to pass it on to the learners during their time together; either face-to-face or online.

A flipped classroom is one where learners access materials about the topic before they meet, and they spend the time when they are all together in applying the new knowledge, addressing any queries and discussing the issues. You can use a flipped classroom approach in face-to-face settings, but it works particularly well for online learning.

The following video explains the concept further, using the example of a school setting, but the same concept can be applied to all types of learning, including fully online learning where there is no face-to-face time.

Activity: The flipped classroom

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Watch this video and then think about the benefits and disadvantages of this approach for your own training by filling in the grid below.

Download this video clip.Video player: tto_1_week1_vidact3.mp4

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Transcript

MAGGIE WARD:

Every day, 7.2 million students walk into classrooms throughout the United States. These classrooms, generally, look the same. Thirty students sit in rows of desks taking notes in their notebooks, while the teacher stands at a whiteboard teaching a lesson. Regardless of ability level, each student receives the exact same information at the exact same pace. As Miss Jackson presents this same material, the students respond differently. Tommy gets it while Allison is bored and Maria is lost. At the end of the day, these same students head home, while at home they sit at the kitchen table doing their homework, and trying to remember what Miss Jackson said.

Students like Tommy make it most of the way through the homework while others like Allison find it easy and fly through it. At the same time, students like Maria get frustrated and need some extra help. Miss Jackson recognises that students have different needs and would love to work individually with each student, but this requires time and resources that her school does not have. One solution to this problem is the flipped classroom. Here's what it looks like. While at home, students sit in their rooms watching videos of the lesson that Miss Jackson assigned. Tommy is still able to work at his normal pace. Allison is no longer bored because now she can use this new technology to fast forward through the easy material.

Maria is no longer frustrated because she can review the material she didn't understand by pausing and rewinding. When really she gets stuck, she can get help from her classmates. New technology platforms like Moodle and Edmodo make it easy for her to chat online with her classmates. Just as the homework is different, the classroom is different as well. Instead of standing in front of the room speaking, Miss Jackson walks around the room. She checks in with Tommy as he works collaboratively with some students. She pushes Allison further with some more challenging work and she helps Maria with the pieces that she still doesn't get.

In the traditional model, the teacher stands between the students and the knowledge, but with the flipped model, the students have direct access to the knowledge and the teacher serves as a coach, mentor and guide, helping the students access this knowledge. The flipped classroom leverages technology in a way that lets both Miss Jackson and the students make the most of their time and efforts.

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Possible benefits	Possible disadvantages
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Discussion

Your answers will depend on the training you were thinking about, but here are some answers we thought of:

Possible benefits

Possible disadvantages

Learners can study at a time that suits them. This may mean that more people can access the training overall. Learners can study at their own pace. Time together (whether face-to-face or online) can be spent on group activities and application. The trainer can be more of a coach or guide and less the person who delivers the knowledge.

People often find it easier to keep a specific time in their diaries clear for a meeting, than to protect time for something that can be done at any time. Learners may need to be more self-disciplined and self-motivated. If they encounter technological problems accessing the materials, the trainer will not be immediately on hand to help. You may find when you meet up that people have not done the preparation work, and you end up having to teach material you were not expecting. Some trainers might not be comfortable as a coach or guide. They might need additional support to take up this new role.

Do you think that a flipped classroom would work well in your context?

If participants are used to turning up to a face-to-face training without undertaking any preparatory work, it can require a change of learning culture in your organisation to make a flipped classroom work well.

It is helpful to be clear when people sign up for a flipped classroom course that it will work differently from other courses they may have attended, and to give them practical tips such as blocking out specific time in their diaries for the preparation work.

The sections Off the shelf: using existing online materials  and Making your own: creating and adapting content discuss some of the ways you can prepare online materials for learners to study independently.

Learning activities

Voluntary and charity sector trainers often use quite interactive styles of training in their face-to-face sessions. For example, they ask participants to do role plays, or they encourage people to share their own experiences of a topic, or they play games that convey a serious point.

These types of activities can help learners to understand topics more deeply, keep them engaged and interested and help participants see connections between their own experiences and the topic under discussion. When trainers first take their training online they sometimes find it difficult to find ways of doing these kinds of activities, and then there is a danger that training becomes very one-directional, with the trainer just imparting lots of information to passive learners.

The Open University categorises the different types of activities that can help people learn under seven headings:

1. Assimilative
2. Finding and handling information
3. Communicative
4. Productive
5. Experiential
6. Interactive/adaptive
7. Assessment

For example, learning activities that involve reading an article or watching a video can be described as ‘assimilative’ because the main thing the learner is doing is taking in and understanding information – assimilating it.

Learners are usually quite comfortable with this type of activity but they will often learn better if they are also encouraged to do things they might find more challenging, such as drawing a mind map to summarise some information (a productive activity), or finding examples of data that contradict a given viewpoint (a finding and handling information activity).

The activity about flipped classrooms that you just completed starts with some assimilative activity (watching the video) and then moves on to a productive activity (filling in the grid). If learners are encouraged to engage in a range of different types of activity, then their learning is likely to be more effective. There is good evidence that online courses with a lot of communicative activities have lower drop-out rates than those with a lot of assimilative activities (Rienties and Toetenel, 2016).

Exploring activity types

View the interactive activity below to see some verbs to describe the kinds of things learners might be doing under each activity heading.

Click 'Reveal' on each of the flip cards to learn more.

Click 'Open' on each tab to learn more.

Not all types of learning use all of these types of activities.

For example, voluntary sector training does not always formally assess learners. The categories are not meant to be understood rigidly – the point is not to worry unduly about how to categorise activities but to use the categories to think about different activities you can use to help people learn.

The next activity explores this approach further.

Your past experiences of activity types

Different people will have had different experiences and so come up with different proportions for each category of learning activity, but it is very common for online learning to end up being highly assimilative.

Assimilative learning can feel drier and less engaging online because the human contact is so much reduced compared to assimilative learning delivered face-to-face.

In face-to-face training, participants often learn a lot informally through conversations with other participants in break times but these opportunities for learning through informal communication are much reduced online.

However, online learning does not have to draw heavily on assimilative types of activity. Using the categories can help you to design in other types of learning. There are no right answers for what proportions of each activity type you should have – what is appropriate will depend on your particular context – but you should think about the following questions:

• Do the learning outcomes for your course require participants to develop particular skills that could be practised during the training? For example, if one learning outcome is ‘increased confidence in discussing sensitive topics’, building in learning activities where participants practise discussing sensitive topics is likely to be very helpful.
• What learning activities are your participants likely to be comfortable and familiar with?
• What learning activities are they likely to find engaging and enjoyable?
• What kinds of learning activities does your past experience of training in this area tell you are likely to be most effective?

In the next activity you will apply these ideas to your own online training to help you generate some ideas for new types of activity that will work in your particular context.

Now choose your next section.

References