Go straight to the IDEAs (you can click on IDEAs in the top menu to go the introductory page, or browse the activities by category).
This blog offers guidance and proposes strategies and activities aimed to engage students in active learning through giving and receiving feedback.
What are the IDEAs?
Inspirations for Digital Engagement Activities (IDEAs) are a collection of ‘recipes’ (templates for activities) devised by members of the UCL Arena and Digital Education teams to help academic staff to foster an independent approach to learning and the ability to monitor one’s progress whether synchronously or asynchronously. Students become more involved and aware in the learning process and active in seeking clarification and support when needed. Through IDEAs, students develop a better understanding of their progress and gain confidence in what they are expected to learn and to what standard.
The activities we propose help to enhance communication between students and teaching staff and peers, particularly to facilitate interaction in a digital learning context. IDEAs are standalone activities that can be adapted to different levels and subject areas; they are embedded in teaching and can be incorporated in session plans.
Each activity includes information on set-up time, preparation needed and suggested resources. We suggest that students are exposed to the activities repeatedly, so that they can familiarise themselves with an active learning approach and gradually gain confidence and refine their understanding of their assessments, the standards required and the rationale behind it.
There is more information about how we developed the IDEAs in this recent paper:
Colaiacomo, S., & Havemann, L. (2022). IDEAS (Inspirations for Digital Engagement Activities) to support the teaching practice of early career academics. Postgraduate Pedagogies, 2(1), 156-171.
Collaborate with us
We hope to keep building this site and so we are inviting colleagues from UCL and beyond to participate. We are very interested in hearing about anything that you have devised and/or on your feedback regarding any of these recipes and your experiences using them. We are keen to share your activities, resources and links here (licensed and credited accordingly). See the contact us page to get in touch.
Credits & License
Please consider the following license and credits to apply to any material on this site, unless otherwise credited and licensed.
IDEAs – Inspirations for Digital Engagement Activities by Simon Walker, Samantha Ahern, Silvia Colaiacomo, Leo Havemann, Alexandra Mihai, Tim Neumann, Karen Shackleford-Cesare, Abbi Shaw, Clive Young (UCL Arena & Digital Education) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.