CTC Continuing Education

Hello Instructors! A great way to create student involvement in the classroom is with small group activities. While reading William A Draves’ How to Teach Adults he mentioned how activities give students a diverse perspective on the topic, leading to greater learning. Here are some ways to enhance your small group actives:

1.  Brainstorming – Students generate a wide variety of ideas, suggestions and possibilities on a topic. No one should be allowed to criticize or evaluate an idea suggestion.
2. Role playing – Have students act out a real or hypothetical situation, taking roles not normally connected to that person. The object is to see the situation from another’s perspective.
3. Case incidents – Analyzing a real-life situation or case incident and discuss the pros and cons.
4. Committee – Break the students into committees to decide on policy, study or formulate ideas on a given topic.
5. Sensitivity group – Have the students engage in various sensitivity exercises designed to bring out feeling and share experiences with each other.
6. Task force – A group is given a specific mission with an end goal. Once they have finished the task the group reports back to the rest of the back on the progress or achievement.
7. Panel – Students are chosen to discuss a topic in front of the rest of the class with a student moderator. The purpose is to showcase different viewpoints and encourage discussion without taking sides
8. Debate – Is similar to a panel but with a debate the students take sides and bring out opposite viewpoints.
9. Interview – When inviting a guess speaker, designate a couple of students to interview the speaker.
10. Listening team – Divide the students into groups of three: a speaker, listener and observer. The speaker relaters his or her experience on a topic the other two. The listener will question, repeat and restate key phrase for clarification from the speaker. The observer will observe and report to the other two on what he witnessed.
11. Network group – Students meet from time to time to talk about a specific topic or to simply share problems.
12. Reaction panel – Break the class up into small groups where they react or reflect on a talk, film, or presentation. The goal is to get critical reviews and class input.

I hope you find this tip to be helpful as you plan your class! Feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions, questions about teaching, or marketing needs.