Learning activity

Interactive exploration of key course concepts

Help students move from passive reading to active understanding by building comprehension, curiosity, and collaboration before a readiness quiz (iRAT/tRAT)

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Created by:

Fanny Tsai

UC Irvine

Pedagogy

Team-based Learning

Learning outcome

Prep time

Intermediate (10-30 min)

Activity type

Learning Activity

Why this learning activity?

Learning activities targeting high-order skills like this one can help you activate students more effectively. This learning activity will help you with:

Concept Annotation Literacy

Students locate, annotate, and tag key concepts and relationships in the text using provided criteria and cues.

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Evidence-Based Reasoning

Students respond to prompts with brief justifications grounded in the source text, naming assumptions and citing supporting passages.

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Preparation for Team Readiness

Students surface questions, note uncertainties, and summarize takeaways to prime themselves for the upcoming readiness quiz.

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Activity setup

Activity steps Activity goals Tools used In this activity

Interactive exploration of key course concepts

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Activity steps

Read instructions: Students go through the instructions and familiarize themselves with activity requirements.
Annotation: Students will annotate the attached document based on pre-set questions and prompts from the instructor. The goal here is to get students interacting with the material from the course and prepare them individually for the next step in team based learning process, which is the team readiness quiz. ‍
Implementation: This activity is not focused on grading the individual contributions but rather getting students engaged with the content and supporting them through discussion and questions. Instructors will use the insights from this activity to plan the next step in the team-based learning strategy.

Learning Activities Used

Interactive Document

Student-Content engagement to stimulate student success

In this activity

This templates example document is focused on a case about Stephen Hawking, you can alter the interactive document to fit your course needs and use the existing questions as a guide for ways to achieve the learning outcomes.
There are 4 question cards attached within the interactive document that sparks critical thinking and reflection from students. You can alter these questions to fit your needs.
Anonymity is turned off so that students can see each others discussion points and ideas. Modify this if you would prefer their answers to be anonymous
Grading is turned off since the main purpose of this activity is to encourage student engagement with materials and prepare them for a team readiness quiz. You can turn on grading if you wish to evaluate students based on their contributions to the question cards.