This is session 1 of 3 sessions that I do for Introduction to Evidence Based Medicine in Pharmacy. For this session I had about an hour so the majority of the session is group work. Included are the materials to build the activity, an overview of the lesson (since so much was group work, I wouldn't call it a lesson plan), and the rubric for assessing /grading the activity. This was designed for Zoom/online synchronous teaching. A guide was created to assist with the work in the class (with links to all class activities) and be a place for students to refer back to later. Some content in this guide was hidden until they completed their work for each session (since to help with metacognition the examples on the guide are the same as what they worked through in the sessions).
This assignment/activity works to pair students in fully online or hybrid courses in order to discuss, via phone or messaging app, any topic of choice. In this example, students in a 100-level composition course discuss their research topic of interest with their partner and offer each other suggestions for refinement. This assignment could be adapted in a variety of ways to support other research assignments or projects.
After completing this activity students will... - Be able to define their research topic more clearly - Understand that discussing research with each other leads to new/different ideas - Have made a connection with a classmate in an online course that could continue beyond this assignment
Course Context (e.g. how it was implemented or integrated):
I have used this activity in both an online and a hybrid (50%) section of an English 102 Research Writing Course. It serves as a way to pair students for research conversations when they are not physically in a classroom together. These pairs could be used throughout the quarter/semester for regular research conversations between students and/or peer-review exercises. This activity is highly adaptable to your teaching context, course, and research assignments. I look forward to hearing how others are able to use it!
Potential Pitfalls and Teaching Tips:
Executing this activity well, especially the first time, can require a good amount of hands on time from the librarian/instructor implementing it. As noted in the assignment description document, pairing students with the Donut app on Slack takes time; using a random pairing generator doesn't take as much. The biggest potential pitfall is students not being able to connect with their partner. Online courses can have students who do not check in regularly enough to allow them to connect with their partner before the due date. I would not penalize students whose partners did not show up. I did pair myself with a student once who didn't have one due to odd numbers in the course.
Minds Online is a concise, nontechnical guide for academic leaders and instructors who seek to advance learning in this changing environment, through a sound scientific understanding of how the human brain assimilates knowledge.
This e-learning site focuses on a critical, but often neglected skill for business, communication, and engineering students, namely visual literacy, or the ability to evaluate, apply, or create conceptual
The RADAR Challenge is an online game developed by the librarians at Loyola Marymount University. The game is designed to be played in teams during a class or library session.
