Week 3 Back Pocket Strategies

Back Pocket Strategies

Ideas for facilitating this activity

Design an activity that has 2-3 parts.  For example:

• Brainstorm the advantages of online learning, then prioritize the list as you believe the advantages might appeal to first year college students. Re-prioritize the list for mid-career professionals.  (Recent retirees?  Students living in remote villages? Downtown Vancouver?)
• List 5 important things for Teams to consider before they begin a team project, then draft a sample team charter (1-2 paragraphs)
• List 5-10 differences between teaching face-to-face and teaching online then draft a statement of philosophy for teaching online

Identify 3-5 different Collaboration tools - be sure to have a mix of synchronous and asynchronous tools. Choose tools that are in Moodle or are readily available to all students. For instance: Discussion forum, Wiki, Collaborate. 

Divide the class into 3-5 teams and assign a different tool to each team.  Teams should be given strict instructions to use only the one tool assigned to their team to complete the assignment.

Finally, craft a sharing and reflection activity that gets at the learning outcomes for this unit. Examples:

• Conduct a Collaborate session where the class shares and discusses the strengths & challenges of various online collaboration tools
• Post a survey (Fluid Survey?) to gather the ideas (Share results with the class)
• Use a discussion forum to share and reflect
• Create a table in a wiki and invite participants to construct a matrix of strengths & challenges of various online collaboration tools or kinds of learning activities best suited for synchronous or asynchronous online engagement