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A. Teaching Methods
Activity: Active Learning Demonstration
Instructions
1.
Divide the group in half
2.
Part 1:
Ask one group to write down everything that they remember about a topic that was
discussed about an hour earlier, without looking at any notes. Ask the second group to
remember and think about the topic, without looking at notes and without writing. After
about two minutes, ask them to stop writing and move on to something else.
3.
Part 2:
After another few hours, a day, or a week has passed, ask both groups write down everything
they remember about the original topic, without looking at any notes. After about two
minutes of writing, ask each person to count the number of words that they have written.
Have members of the first group, who wrote in the first part of the exercise, compare their
numbers with those in the second group, who didn’t write the first time around.
Hypothesis
The average number of words written in Part 2 will be higher in the group who wrote about the
topic in Part 1 than in the group who only thought about the topic in Part 1.
Interpretation
Did your groups’ data match the hypothesis? Are you surprised?
What else is interesting about this exercise?
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