Creating Activities

Learning Activities

Complete these activities to develop online homework assignments for your course:

Identify the learning objectives for your course. It is important that the homework assignments you develop reflect your learning objectives.
You cannot design homework assignments for all topics in your course, but choose topics for which you can obtain images and data, and that have relevance to your students.
Once you have chosen a topic, select four or five images that illustrate aspects of the topic. Web searches can help to locate appropriate images. If you incorporate a link to an external site, make sure that the site is easy to navigate and not too busy. Provide students with very clear instructions about what they are to view.
Once you have selected images, write a series of questions that refer to the images. It is usually best to have each question refer to just one image. Make the questions short and as straightforward as possible. It is very difficult to write unambiguous questions (remember the students are working on their own) and you will probably have to refine them after the first time you use them.
After you assign the homework, follow up in class and ask students to provide feedback to questions about the homework.

Assessment

Compare results of student exams before and after using the technique. Have student scores improved?

Survey students about their attitude toward the technique and ask them to rank the various learning techniques used in your course. Do students have a positive attitude toward the technique and do they find it a valuable learning tool?

Carefully examine student responses on the standard evaluation instrument used at the end of each semester. Do students mention this technique and how do they view it?

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