Learning Strategies
This page will provide an overview of the key learning and teaching strategies and how they can be implemented to enhance the student learning experience in any delivery mode.

Key Takeaways

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When L&T strategies are executed appropriately, they generate the right conditions for learning

Foster and nurture new understanding, behaviours, values, skills and attitudes.

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Learning Strategies are powerful

It is essential for students to take an active and participatory role in the learning process in order to construct knowledge and understanding; but more than just simply doing something, it is also about helping students to understand the process of learning, critically thinking and reflecting about what they are doing and why. This page highlights some of the active learning strategies that you can utilise in your course.

Why?

When L&T strategies are executed appropriately, they generate the right conditions for the following:

  • Autonomy
  • Learning
  • Fostering and nurturing new understanding
  • Behaviours
  • Values
  • Skills
  • Attitude
  • Emotion

Let’s explore some of the learning strategies and activities that you can implement across your course in any delivery mode.

Selecting the Appropriate Activity

Ways of Learning

Knowledge Acquisition Assessment and feedback CommunicationCollaboration Reflective Integrating Future Ready

Active Learning Activities


Inquiry Based

Students use an investigative process to discover concepts for themselves. After the instructor identifies an idea, scenario or concept, a question is posed that asks students to make observations.

Pros and Cons

Get students to list advantages and disadvantages of an issue.

Content Curation
Students to curate relevant, meaningful and current resources on a topic.
Informal Assessment

Quizzes can be used at the beginning of a session or after delivery

Authentic Assessment

Focus on realistic situations and industry based skills to prepare students in being career ready.

Feedforward-feedback

Feedback is the most important part of assessments for learning but students need to learn how to read and take on feedback. Intentional feedforward activities like peer-assessment can build these skills.
Visuals

Use concept maps or other forms of imagery to visually represent and communicate information.

Peer Led Instructions

Have students prepare and present course material to the class

Post-It

Students provide their thoughts and ideas to a question or prompt on a post-it.

Question-discussion *quescussion

This activity involves the exploration of a topic or concept by asking questions only.

Bloom Taxonomy Questioning

Use the verbs remember, understand, apply, analyse, evaluate and create to design questions.

Social

Ask students to comment on a resource they are required to watch or read. (Could cross over with socialà)


Muddiest Point


The technique consists of asking students to jot down a quick response to one question: “What was the muddiest point in [the lecture, discussion, homework assignment, film, etc.]?” The term “muddiest” means “most unclear” or “most confusing (Vanderbilt University)
Triad Groups

Like peer review, students may evaluate group presentations or documents to assess the quality of the content and delivery of information.

Jigsaw Expert Groups

Like peer review, students may evaluate group presentations or documents to assess the quality of the content and delivery of information.

Think Pair Share

Use TPS to get students to work together to solve a problem or answer a question

Ideation & Design

Thinking You can use brainstorming/thinking tools to brainstorm and generate ideas with your students using the templates and frameworks.

Problem Based

Pose a problem to your group of students whereby they need to work as a group to solve the problem.

Pause Points

Throughout a class or resource, particularly after stating an important point or defining a key concept, stop and allow students time to think about the information.

After the pause, ask if anyone needs to have anything clarified and for students Ask students to review their notes and ask questions about what they’ve written so far.

Weekly Entries
Use graded and compulsory discussions in Canvas.

Self and Peer Feedback
Helps the educator to ensure they are delivering relevant lessons, allows students to adjust and stay focused.

Formative – every week, recap and reinforce key points Design quizzes for students to self-identify knowledge gaps

Summative – provide feedback after final assessments Journals Ask students to journal their learning experience and
Field Trips (Virtual & F2F)
Ask students to attend or explore a field trip which is a guided exploration providing insights into the industry.

Real Word Case Studies and Problem Solving
Students work individually or in groups, applying knowledge gained from lectures or reading materials to a given situation

Production
Students use technology or industry based equipment to get a deeper understanding of key concepts as well as design and develop field related contents to provide evidence of their learning.

Top 5 Strategies to Promote Student Engagement

  1. Transparency Introduce key concepts early on in the course and clearly layout expectations and roles online and in the classroom.
  2. Authenticity Explain the purpose and connection of key concepts and assessment tasks in relation to future pathways in the prospective industry.
  3. Agile Teaching Use a variety of active learning strategies in a targeted way, e.g. include several of the activities during a session if an activity may be taking too much time or isn’t as effective as you had hoped. Have a backup plan!
  4. Be Mindful of Time and Wellbeing. Consider the amount of time a task can take. Can it be shared between peers OR could the activity work as a pre-class task? This can save you time in class to focus on more important concepts.
  5. Belonging. Create opportunities for students to complete activities together and ensure they are challenging enough to need two or more students. Factor in different perspectives and experience to boost communication and connection. Integrate group work as a regular experience from week to week. Check out our Belonging page
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Where to next?

You may also like to check out these additional pages for more information.

Boost Productivity and Engagement with Tech

If you would like to explore further learning and teaching strategies we have developed an interactive matrix of curated classroom technologies aligned with the ways of learning to support you in the classroom.
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Other Effective Teaching Strategies

There are many teaching strategies you can utilise in your classroom. We have developed a quick list of strategies to support concurrent delivery, however many these strategies can be executed in any delivery mode.