Activities from TRAILS courses

The following activities were developed and used in TRAILS courses. If you're an instructor, feel free to use and adapt these activities in courses you teach. Each activity is listed with its purpose, to make it easy to decide which might be useful in new courses. Please give us feedback on any activities that you use in your course.

From the Math Forum

20 Questions: Helping students understand applets

The purposes of this are to both assess what students already know and help them understand the scope and purpose of applets designed for learning in school.

A web application that supports the activity is available here:
http://mathforum.org/trails/feedback.html

Team formation activities from Stanford

The main projects are completed in small groups. We aim for each group to contain members with a variety of skills. We also look for compatible work teams. To form teams, we used four activities:

1. Scavenger Hunt
2. Class Résumé
3. Résumé Assignment, Speed Interviewing
4. Personal Learning Story

Scavenger Hunt

The purpose of this activity is to provide a fun way to get to know potential teammates as people, an important but sometimes overlooked aspect of team work.

Find a person who:

• Knows a programming language (what language?)
• Has been a teacher (what grade?)
• Has lived in a country other than the United States (what country?)
• Has read a good book lately (what book?)
• Speaks a language other than English fluently (what language?)
• Has collaborated with people in different academic fields than their own (examples?)
• Has a special talent (what is it?)
• Has a preferred working style (what is it?)
• Has a favorite subject (what is it?)

Class Résumé Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to get a sense of the skills and background you’ll bring to your team, your interests or goals in taking the course, and the type of role you’d like to play. The following prompts will provide a guideline. Also, feel free to add information you feel would be relevant or useful to your potential team members.

Vitals

• Your name
• Academic program of study
• Year
• Experience
  

  Include both work and student roles that are relevant given what you know of the class (i.e., 3rd grade art teacher, software development team member, museum docent, grand champion of the Math Olympics, etc.) Include a brief description where necessary (1 or 2 sentences)

  Content and setting interests

Subject areas of interest (i.e., math, science, language, art, history, etc.) For those also interested in out-of-school settings, what do you have in mind (i.e., museums, after-school programs, etc.)?

Role(s) you’d like to play on a team

• Team leader (i.e. project management)
• Technology development leader
• Curriculum development leader

  Note: Taking on a particular role does not exclude you from participation in the other areas. It’s simply the area where you’ll be responsible for managing the rest of the team.

  What you’re particularly interested in getting out of the course

1 or 2 sentences about what interests you about the course and what you’d like to learn and/or accomplish.

Anything else you’d like to add (optional)

Résumé Speed Interviewing

The purpose of this activity is to consider generally what makes a good working group and to start forming a working group for the class project.,
Have a couple copies of your resume with you. Place all resumes on a table. Everyone browses through them and chooses two people to interview. Now, in five minute intervals, do those interviews, based on three questions:

1. What do we have in common?
2. How do we complement each other?
3. If we were going to work together, what other skills would a third member need to bring to the group?

Personal Learning Story

The purposes of this activity are: to make personal and vivid how learning theory describes—or doesn’t—actual learning; to anchor early thinking about what it means to learn something, and; to introduce potential group members to each other, through sharing stories.

Each person takes 10 minutes to write a story about a time they learned something specific. Be as specific as possible about the setting, the people, the tools, what was learned and how it was learned. Then exchange stories. Read someone else’s and consider how learning theory explains what happened. In a group discussion, highlight commonalities and differences.

Have related activities to share?

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0205625. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.