The following are some suggestions on how you can present your course content in an interactive way.
Guest Speakers. When you find a topic that is difficult to approach, a good way to do it is by inviting guest speakers. Your do not need to find "the experts" to be your speakers, but you should also tap into the resources that parents and community members have to offer. To make the class interactive, ask your students to take notes during the presentation to ask questions later, or work with your class to prepare some questions in advance. Remember that any topic is easier to learn if it is somewhat related to the student's interests.
Web Scavenger Hunts. Either as a way to introduce a topic or as a way to review it, web scavenger hunts are a good activity to learn content. For instance, you may create a scavenger hunt to introduce a topic and then ask your students to create their own scavenger hunts to review the topic. You may group the students to create the assignment and then exchange scavenger hunts among the class groups.
Bulletin Board Postings. If you are using a course management tool, such as WebCT, you may ask your students to use the Bulletin Board (BB). Some uses of the BB are:
In any way that you choose to use the BB, you need to make sure that the students understand the netiquette of BB postings: no bad language, respect to others' points of view, no confrontational postings, etc.
Class Discussions. As a general rule, students will pay more attention to the lecture if the instructor warns them that they will be asked to give feedback during the class. If this is something that accommodates your teaching style, make sure that you call random students from all broadcasting sites. Furthermore, you do not need to ask the first question to a student in your originating site, but asking a question to a student far away and then asking for a follow-up response to a student in your originating site will keep the students' attention on the class content.
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Select a debate topic to be discussed and act as a moderator |
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Have students to complete incomplete handouts to be discussed in class |
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Encourage students at all sites to participate in games and competitions organized around issues and topics relevant to your course |
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Simulate or present case studies, scenarios, problems and let students role play, analyze and resolve such problems with assistance and guidance from you or from community experts |
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Let students write responses to problems posed on email or bulletin board for class discussion |
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Promote group work in chunks of time of 10-20 minutes |
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Conduct site surveys, such as opinion polls on values and have the results tallied by site for class discussion |
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Handout some questions to be answered during class time |
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Let students generate questions on topics studied in class to be answered during class time |
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Encourage small group discussion with report to be presented to the whole class |
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Control class presentation, while allowing questions and answers during such exercises |
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Promote free speech on any topic relevant to the course to encourage participation in class |
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Share Internet findings on a given problem for class discussion |
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Report on local perception of an issue for class debate |
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