Quick activities to get students talking with each other

Our campus was fortunate enough to have Dr. Christine Harrington on campus last month for a series of workshops.  An active learning classroom turned out to be a good fit for Christine's lively, participant-centered style of workshop delivery; the fact that each session was peppered with a variety of classroom activities turned out to be an added bonus of being a workshop participant.  A few of my favorite activities from the sessions are shared below.  Each activity described here makes use of index cards but small pieces of scratch paper are likely to work just as well.  (UWEC instructors - stop by Printing Services in Schofield 18 to pick up free pads of pre-cut scratch paper.)

Five Card Pass (in 5 minutes or less)

Provide students with a prompt (answer a question, make a list, etc.) and 1-2 minutes to write down their anonymous response on an index card.  With everyone out of their seats, students then exchange cards five times - the exchanges have to be with classmates that are not sitting at their pod/table.  The cards (and ideas) have now been randomly shuffled, so to speak, and students can be asked to do a number of things with the info on their new card - add, discuss, find an example, respond, etc. 

Brainwriting (5-10 minutes)

Provide students with a prompt, index cards, and 1-2 minutes to respond with one item or detail, writing it at the top of the card.  Next, instruct students to pass the index card to the right and write down another item/detail on the card that is now in front of them.  Same prompt, but the response must be unique - i.e., it cannot be the same as one written or read on other cards.  Continue passing and responding until the time is up or the possibilities have been exhausted.  

A more thorough overview of brainwriting is available on the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit wiki.  For an argument in favor of using brainwriting, check out this video from the Kellogg School of Management - it also highlights a variation of the brainwriting exercise described above.

Save the Last Word for Me (10-15 minutes)

This activity is designed to give everyone in the group a chance to be heard and practice listening skills.  Plus, it gives students something to do with an assigned reading and gets them talking (with each other!) about it.  See more information about this activity on The Teacher Toolkit site.

Often times, students are accustomed to directing questions, comments, responses, etc. to the instructor and need an extra nudge to, instead, exchange ideas with one another.  The activities shared here are relatively low-prep ways to get students engaging with one another in the classroom - and each has the possibility of being implemented in 15 minutes or less.  Perfect for getting students talking with one another with little preparation and each of these activities can be adapted to a wide variety of topics, prompts, and readings.

Using Padlet to initiate in-class (and out-of-class) discussions

I knew they had questions.

There had only been four class meetings and less than two weeks for us to get comfortable with the class structure and one another.  Plus, our first stretch of online activities for our hybrid class was quickly approaching.  Despite all of this, the discussion area on D2L reserved for general Q&A remained quiet.  Zero posts.

Addressing questions, concerns, and requests was likely to alleviate some of the uncertainty that can accompany the initial “online days” in a hybrid class, especially on a campus like ours in which hybrid (blended) courses still are not all that common.  On a whim, I set up a Padlet page for questions – any kind of questions, no names attached – and set aside three minutes near the beginning of class for the students to chat and post questions.  Within those three minutes, we had a whole collection of things to address, with each group posting at least one question and some posting four or five.  I spent the next few minutes directly addressing a handful of the posted questions, focusing on the ones that were likely to benefit most from the students’ input (e.g., a question about assignment due dates) or repeating an important message (e.g., yes, asking questions and contacting me via email during our online stretch are both part of the deal).

A glimpse (screen shot) of just part of our questions page on the Padlet site.

Three things I love most about Padlet include: 

•    The ease of setting up a page with just a moment’s notice.
•      The fact that no login is required for students to post and/or view – I just have to provide them with the URL.  Double-clicking on the background is all it takes to add a post once you are on the page.
•       Its collaborative nature, especially when students can see the other posts appearing as they make their own contribution.

Maybe it is the third item that really wins me over - there is something reassuring about putting yourself out on a limb when you can see others doing the same!  Padlet is like a wiki-meets-online-bulletin-board that is just plain easy to use.  It seems much more organic than the discussion area available in the LMS (which has its own usefulness), and I appreciate that the conversation can continue outside of class too.  Several questions were added to the board after class was over, and I was able to go back and post responses to the questions we didn't have time to elaborate on while in the classroom.  Once this was accomplished, I simply re-posted the URL as part of an announcement alerting the students to the updates.

I have no doubt that we will be using Padlet to jump start in-class conversation again in the near future!  In the meantime, I will be looking around for ideas of how others are using Padlet for teaching and learning.