Active Learning Activities

Spinning the Data? Thinking Critically about Maps

Students create choropleth maps to explore how maps can inform, persuade and mislead.

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.

Virtual Voices: Navigating Suicide Prevention Through Simulation

Students engage in a virtual simulation using therapeutic techniques, risk assessment, and interventions.

Editing Exercise: Mock Academic Conference

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

Biologist Says: Mini-Game for Recalling Biology Terms

A familiar and easy to implement game to help students with recall of biological terms.

BioQuest: Mini-Game for Categorizing Biology Terms

A fun consolidating activity at the end of a topic or unit to help students categorize and consolidate biological terms.

100 Years of Work

This is a jigsaw activity where students map key developments in workplace design over 100 years.

Group Work Project Contracting

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

From Bauhaus to Britney: A Catchall Timeline

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

Find Someone Who… An Icebreaker With Purpose

In this activity, students try to find someone for each list item. Items highlight key issues explored in the course.

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.

Role Reveal 201: Exploring Interdisciplinary Collaboration

In teams, students from each discipline complete a patient interview then contrast their approaches.

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

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.

Preparation for Future Learning: Electric Flux

In this worksheet activity, students are introduced to the concept of flux and the relation between field lines and area.

Blended Learning: Just in Time

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

Instructional Survey

The aim of this activity is to provide students with an overview of survey design and execution.

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).

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard

Durkheim Suicide: Functionalist and Conflict Theory

In this activity, students compare 4 psychological perceptive of suicide (anomic, fatalistic, egoistic, and altruistic).