The Active Digital Learning Environment: Beyond Using Canvas as a Repository Dr Isobel Gowers Director of Learning, Teaching and Assessment (Acting) Faculty of Science and Engineering

Active Learning and the Digital Environment Active Learning: “Instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing” (Bonwell and Eison, 1991) 6% average increase in student assessment results with active learning (Freeman et al., 2014) Classroom and flipped learning have been the focus of much of the technology enhanced active learning research Classroom (Freeman et al., 2014) Flipped learning (Arico and Lancaster, 2018)

Current Practice in Canvas

Students Expectations of the Digital Learning Environment First year biology module Lecture slides Quizzes Interactive tutorials Wikinotes Findings Students claimed lecture notes were most useful digital resource Quizzes most widely used activity Only 1/125 students used Wikinotes

Discussion What type of activities do you / could you include or how do you / could you scaffold resources to make the digital environment more active? How do you / could you encourage students to engage with online activities? What are the barriers to success? https://en-gb.padlet.com/Isobel_gowers/CIHE

Some Examples of Framing Videos Direction – questions for the students to think about Direction – quiz questions associated with videos Social learning – discussion forums associated with video Social learning – external tools, such as Talis Elevate Creating…

Take home messages Digital environment needs to be more than just a repository if we want to truly embrace active learning Quick wins → holistic approach Still gaps in our knowledge in making digital learning = active learning Are you interested in collaborating on research to further explore how digital active learning works in practice? Isobel.Gowers@anglia.ac.uk