Active Learning Activities

Active learning activities are tailored to specific learning outcomes and content. They incorporate one or more of the evidence-based strategies. Structured to expose their theoretical underpinnings, the activities can be used by practitioners and researchers alike.

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Languages and Literature General Interdisciplinary

Quote Unquote: A Two-Stage Quiz

Students learn to apply the rules for integration, punctuation, referencing and formatting of direct quotes in their writing.

Environmental science Geography

Spinning the Data? Thinking Critically about Maps

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

Photo by Dana Andreea Gheorghe on Unsplash

Applied arts

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.

Applied arts

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.

Social sciences

GoTestMe: Student-Generated Test Questions

In this test review activity, students create questions, exchange them with a peer, and answer each other's questions.

STEM Biology

Actin Up! Molecular Mechanisms of Muscle Contraction

Students are assigned molecular roles, and the class acts out the molecular events of skeletal muscle contraction.

STEM Health science

Virtual Voices: Navigating Suicide Prevention Through Simulation

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

STEM Biology

Just One Clue: Biology Edition

A cooperative game to guess Biology terms using creative, unique clues. Great for learning and reviewing terminology.

Biology Environmental science Geography

Earth History Walk

A self-guided walk exploring how – and why – Earth changed over its 4.6 billion year history.

STEM Physics

Mystery Tube Challenge: The Nature & Process of Science

Students model the hidden structure of a sealed tube as a metaphor for how scientists explore the unseen.

Languages and Literature

Constructive Commentary

This activity guides students through set steps and strategies to comment on their peers' creative writing.

Languages and Literature

Editing Exercise: Mock Academic Conference

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

STEM Biology

Biologist Says: Mini-Game for Recalling Biology Terms

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

Photo by National cancer institute from Unsplash

STEM Biology

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.

STEM Education

Drawing to Learn: Doing Science is more Complex that You Think

Students draw a diagram of how they think scientists "do science." These are improved then compared with an expert diagram.

Languages and Literature

Peer Review for Beginners

This peer-review activity for English 101 aims to help students improve their essays, but also to develop evaluation skills.

Applied arts

100 Years of Work

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

STEM Chemistry

Keeping Up With the Trends

This activity is aimed at getting students to write sound, scientific rationales for observed phenomena.

Social sciences Humanities

Finding Catharsis in Film and Media

Students analyze a film or piece of media watched in the course using two concepts: climax and catharsis.

STEM Biology

Hemoglobin Hustle: An Adaptation of Race for the Hat

Used the Race for the Hat activity to create a Jeopardy-style session on blood & blood disorders for a pathophysiology class.

Social sciences Psychology

Dragon’s Den – Brain Exploration Techniques

Students engage in a gamified activity mimicking the popular tv show the Dragon's Den.

STEM Health science

Safety Prevention in Each Developmental Stage

In this roll the dice game, students will identify injuries to be awarded points. The team with the most points wins.

Social sciences Humanities

Group Work Project Contracting

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

STEM Biology

Electron Odyssey: Journey through the Mitochondria’s Electron Transport Chain

Students play the roles of protein complexes to see how electrons, protons, and energy moves through the ETC to produce ATP.

Active Learning Activities