Background: We are designing faculty workshops for the fall and targeting new faculty who are busy surviving and do not have a lot of time for learning. Our goal is to have the learning activity duration between 20 and 30 min. So time was my first consideration in looking through the LS menu. After identifying about 5 possibilities I landed on Improv Prototyping.
My area is education technology, which we describe as applying technology to learning.
Invitation
We welcome you to Act Out!
For this activity we need some players. Come on up here to the stage. Your task - should you choose to accept it - is to act out the most challenging experience of using technology for learning since the beginning of the semester. The player roles are one student, one new professor and one colleague who has been teaching longer.
The scene plays out - 3-5 minutes
Small observer groups pull out what they saw - 1 minute for self reflection, 2 minutes for pair discussion, 2 min for foursome discussion (if numbers allow)., 2 minutes for big group discussion). This is a modification of the 1-2-4-all 7 minutes
Each observer group then does their own improv on that same challenge and tries to improve on that experience 5 min.
Ask for volunteers to act out the “improved” challenge in front of the larger group 5 min.
Debrief 5 min.
An example might be setting up a grade book, using classroom technology etc. Often these are process related and by seeing the process acted out it may point to easier processes or solutions to common challenges that we may not know even existed.
Looking forward to your feedback.
Ross