Active Learning Activities

Group Work Project Contracting

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

Running on Water: Activating Prior Knowledge of Static Equilibrium

Students watch, discuss, then analyze the veracity of a video in which hydrophobic shoes allow people to run on water.

Mechanics in Motion: Iterative GIF Creation

In groups, students create GIFs to demonstrate and explain how mechanic principles apply in real-life scenarios.

Nature of Science Ice-Breaker

A first class ice-breaker activity introducing the nature of science.

Card Sorting Activities for Mechanics

Physics Worksheet Based Activity

The aim of the activity is the application of concepts and math to solve complex problems.

Peer Review, Assessment & Feedback

Interrupted Case Study in Material Engineering

This activity uses real life case study examples to give students a more in-depth look at analytics.

Group Problem Solving with Show and Tell

Students learn to build a conceptual model describing a Mechanics-based situation and practice mathematical problem-solving.

Model Building

Students learn to build a conceptual model describing a situation involving an accelerating charged particle.

Circuits: Card Sorting With Multiple Representations (E&M)

Students develop their ability to reason about physics concepts in terms of multiple representations, beyond just equations.

Electrostatics: Card Sorting With Mutiple Representations (E&M)

Students associate configurations of charges with their characteristics from word, diagram & graph representations.

Building Effective Teams

Family HiStories of Migration

Students interview two members of their family to collect information about their family history and present it in class.

Reflective Reading on Islam

Students use homework questions to prompt a deeper engagement with the reading material to generate better class discussion.

Forget the Math! Draw Pictures to Learn the Wave Theory of Light

Engineering Poster Presentations with Peer Assessment

Peer Review Calibration and Constructive Feedback Workshop

This activity's goal is to familiarize students with the peer review process and teach them how to accept peer criticism.

Problem Set Using Lightboard Video Recordings

Talk to Your Neighbour

The aim of this activity is to grab student attention and have them work on problems related to material just presented.

Bottle Rocket Tracker

Using video and Tracker software, students learn to analyze and fit equations of motion to raw data.

Dart Gun Velocity

In this activity, students will find the muzzle velocity of a foam dart gun and predict its maximum range.

Circus Launch Clicker Questions

Forces Scavenger Hunt