Active Learning Activities

Take it Outside: A Field Trip in Three Acts

This activity serves as a field trip template to engage students with pre, during, and post-visit observations and analysis.

Let Me Draw You a Picture…

Students use visual thinking to diagram / illustrate a subject with the only criteria being they have expert knowledge of it.

Editing Exercise: Mock Academic Conference

Research, writing & editing activity that builds interpretive skills and the ability to incorporate research.

Group Work Project Contracting

For instructors planning student group work projects over many weeks or months.

Taskmaster: Diction Icebreakers

These gamified activities will help sensitize students to the nuances of diction and allow them to work together.

From Bauhaus to Britney: A Catchall Timeline

Students map key movements in Architecture and Design alongside social, political, artistic, economic, and tech milestones.

The Heart of the Matter: Exploring Exercise in Cardiac Disease

Before class, students read an article and gather 5 elements. In class, they "pool" findings and sort into categories.

Cross-Disciplinary Synergy 101: Uniting Expertise for Success

In teams, students interact, share information on their profession, and create cases where each discipline is needed

Crash Course: Collision Theory

Students use PhET simulation to learn how factors affect reaction rate (collision theory) through hands-on activities

Controversy in the Science Classroom: Nature of Science Quiz

This activity aims to bring about conceptual change by making explicit common misconceptions about the nature of science.

Don’t go NUTS: A Case Study on the Physiology of Stress

In this activity students apply their knowledge of the physiology of the stress response to a real-life research scenario.

An Abundance of Bells

The aim of this activity is to demonstrate that many continuous data of nature and psychology follow a normal distribution.

Blended Learning: Just in Time

This activity benefits students by exposing them to literature in their field while preparing them for the following lecture.

How to Write Reading Annotations

This activity helps students improve their quality of reading annotations using platforms like Perusall.

Harvard Implicit Bias Test

In-Class Think Pieces: Course Pack

Vénus d’Ille: Police Enquiry

This activity has students challenge the literal meaning of a text (ie. the supernatural explanation for a murder).

Sustainability Development Plan (Part 1 and Part 2)

In this activity, students learn to define sustainability and apply this to a single Montreal neighbourhood. 

Rédaction d’un Paragraphe de Texte Expressif

In this multiple-class activity, students write a “texte expressif”, applying theory & grammatical lessons learned in class.

Disappearing Sea Otters

Students take the role of an ecologist and try to analyze species behaviours and predict population change.

Short Stories and Social Realism: Building an Essay Toolkit

In this multiple-class activity, students build a toolkit of essay-writing skills through analyzing a short story text.