One-way knowledge transfer from the teacher to the student is not activating. That is why a main idea of activated learning, is that the students get to actively work themselves. Knowledge development only takes place when the students themselves read the study books and carry out preparatory tasks, after which in-depth study takes place during the teaching meeting: the so-called flipped classroom approach. The knowledge clip is a particularly good tool for the teacher to highlight the main points of the material and the most important problems of a subject. The student studies the clip at a time of their choosing and can repeat this as often as necessary.
Because the student prepares well for a teaching session with the knowledge clips, this frees up time for effective feedback opportunities during the teaching session. The tips below will help you make the most of knowledge clips.
Tip 1: encourage self-study and be firm
Encourage students to do the self-study assignments, including studying knowledge clips. Without explicit instruction, the subsequent face-to-face teaching session may fail because the students may not have watched the clips after all. Take a look at the experience of lecturer Annemarie Zand Scholten of the University of Amsterdam for inspiration. Her solution? Just be firm and stop the lecture or work group, if it turns out that the students have not studied the knowledge clips (to show that you really mean it). We would like to refer to our previous tip on how to encourage students to engage in self-study.
Tip 2: stimulate the learning process
The core task of the teacher is to guide students in their learning process by offering attractive, authentic and relevant tasks and assignments. Assignments that contribute to the achievement of the learning objectives and set the learning process in motion. The tasks should match the students' prior knowledge and skills as closely as possible.
During educational meetings, you can focus on deepening the knowledge, rather than sharing the basics. For example, by keeping a fixed structure in the meeting, such as: a summary of the material by one or two groups of students, discussing difficult material, discussing examination assignments, working out a case, discussing frequently made mistakes, letting the students improve their case based on the discussion and finally giving feedback.
Tip 3: provide feedback and feedforward for students
Before the assignments and during the meetings, you ensure the students get feedback on the performed tasks, and thus also on their grasp of the studied knowledge clips. Based on this, you ask them to improve their work and to better prepare for an assignment or final test: so-called feedforward.
Remember that as a teacher, often you do not have to give the feedback yourself. You can, for example, have students discuss problems in groups, in so-called buzz groups, via the think-pair-share method, use polls or quizzes, or apply peer instruction. For more inspiration, read tip 19: how to promote real learning during the lecture.
Digital support
VU Amsterdam has applications available for all the above-mentioned functionalities. On VU Tools for Education, you will find an overview of all available tools and their implementation.