You might be wondering what kind of activities to use to engage your students in the learning process or to develop their creativity. Here are some examples I have used recently that have worked pretty well. I relate each activity to one of the 3 stages described in "Tips on how to engage your students:
So.. these are some for now, will continue to add … Visit soon!
- Arouse Curiosity: In the class we were going to use SCAMPER to redesign Lollipops, I sent an email the email the day before talking about the importance of new product development in innovation and that we were going to work on some tools that broke the boundaries to find really new products then as the students were entering the class I gave each one a a Lollipops and told them not to eat it but to have it because we were going to use it. They were dying to know what we were going to do.
- Deepen the knowledge: After the class had worked on the content, each one of the students had to design a test of the class with 5 questions. They had to review all the material and write the questions (Intelectual learning) and then they stood in a circle, they made paper snowballs with the questions. Each person will take a snowball, send it another student and yell a number from 1 to 5 to signal the question; the student that got the ball had to answer the question. The rest of the class will said if it was ok of if something was missing, if it was missing the other students had the opportunity to add information and get extra points.
- Deepen anticipation (practice): In my classes in the master and undergrad, the two last lessons the students have to apply the CPS is a realistic problem like saving water at home or places to rest at the university. The students have to design the session, prepare the facilitation, bring the materials to facilitate and each one has to facilitate at least one stage of the process! After this, they are ready to go and facilitate with other people!
- Extending the learning: After having the session in one of the stages of CPS and one of the most important tools, the students have to read about the stage, apply the tool in their real life and then they have to come prepare to teach back the stage and the tool to their classmates. They have to design the lesson, the material and so on.
- Heightening anticipation: A week before a class were we were going to learn “forced connections”; I sent an email telling the class about the power of making associations and I asked them that to be prepare to learn about it they had to take 5 pictures of things that caught their attention and also to bring a personal object that was important for them and with a post it with 5 things, attributes of feelings that they associated to that object. They were very curious to know what was going to happen and then very surprised when their pictures were projected in the screen for forced connections and their objects were in envelops in the tables for the same reason!!
- To demonstrate flexibility in class I had the class room set up in table of different number of people, some of 1, 2, 4 and 6. Also there were different heights of chairs and tables. During the class I made them change places regularly.
- Heighten expectation: When working on exploring the vision, one of the stages of CPS, I let them know we were going to talk about dreaming and creating a vision, I had them then, standing up in a circle and sharing a dream they have had and that they had accomplished it. After that I said we were going to learn how to achieve those vision, finding creative way to do it. The were curious to learned.
So.. these are some for now, will continue to add … Visit soon!