The Active Learning (AL) Initiative established by the UNSW Learning Environments team has launched its new library of digital resources providing ideas, inspiration, and support across the UNSW teaching community to actively engage students in their learning in both virtual and physical classrooms.
The AL Initiative identified a valuable opportunity in developing and creating a library of digital resources for teaching staff which provide inspiration, ideas and an exchange of knowledge that can be shared across the community.
Newly created digital resources include:
- An Active Learning Toolkit series. Each of the three toolkits provide a collection of active learning guides, resources, and tools for virtual, face to face and hybrid or hyflex classroom scenarios.
- An Active Learning Guide and Active Learning Reference & Research Resource which are both available to download and contain practical suggestions and interactive resources and research references for active in-class learning.
- 360 Interactive Virtual Tours of Active Learning Spaces which explore the features of a physical active learning space and contains pop-up virtual resources such audio visual technology videos and 3D furniture layout images of ways you can move furniture around to help plan activities for your students in class.
Members of UNSW’s teaching community have collaborated in the development of many AL Initiative resources. The initiative highlights several active learning exemplars that have been showcased over the past 12 months by various UNSW faculties such as Arts, Design and Architecture, Engineering and Medicine & Health.
Some of these exemplars showcase students participating in class activities such as ‘Gallery Walk’ and ‘Roleplays & Simulations’, which are designed to enable students to actively engage in class with their teacher and fellow students. This enhances the students’ understanding and learning of concepts being presented and contributes to an enjoyable classroom experience to look forward to each week.
The vision for this library is to continue to grow its digital resources through a continuous knowledge exchange of ideas, the addition of innovative tools and new active learning exemplars that will be developed and shared across UNSW’s teaching community.
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All staff of the UNSW Community are invited to explore, share, and contribute to this library by visiting the Resources page on the Learning Environments website here.
Find out more about physical and digital Learning Environments at UNSW.
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This article was first published in InsideUNSW.