a.
Eight Nouns Activity: Have students
introduce themselves using eight nouns and
then explain why they picked each
noun.
b. Coffee House Expectations: Have
everyone post 2-3 of their expectations for
the
course in the online coffee house.
2. Scavenger Hunt
Instructor Generated: Send students
on an online scavenger hunt. Such a
technique is
a useful way to acclimate them to using
Web technologies or to a particular content
area.
3. Voting and Polling
Class Decisions: Use voting and
polling tools to make important or
interesting class
decisions. This provides students with a
voice or choice within the class.
4. Interactive Peer and Guest Commenting
a. Link Ratings: Have students not
just suggest Web links for the class but
also
require them to rate or rank those
suggested by their peers.
b. Profile Commenting: Have students
comment on what they have in common with
their peers directly in any peer
profiles and perhaps rate degree of
commonality.
5. Peer Feedback Roles
Critical or Constructive Friends:
Assign students a critical or constructive
friend who
analyzes and critiques one’s work as well
as points out positive aspects of it while
providing additional support where deemed
necessary.
6. Round Robin Activities
Problem Solving: Have students start
answering a question or topic and forward
their
partial answers to someone in their
group who adds comments or ideas to it and
passes it on till it circulates to
everyone in the group. The goal here is to
solve the
problem originally posed. When done,
students share their solutions, case
analyses,
etc., with either the entire group or
class.
7. Gallery Tours and Publishing of
Student Work
Individual Work: Post student work
to the Web as a classroom legacy or
archival
record to display course expectations to
future students.
8. Symposia
Inside Experts: Have an online
panel(s) or symposium(s) of student experts
at the end
of the semester after students have gone
deep into a topic.
9. Brainstorming
Nominal Group Process: Have students
brainstorm ideas on the Web and then rank
and rate the ideas generated. Calculate
average ratings and distribute or create a
top
ten list.
10. Guest experts
Real-Time Chat: Bring in a guest
expert to discuss issues in a real-time chat
with
preset questions or spontaneous
discussion.
