The skill-builders currently available through Cognella’s Active Learning platform can be used in interactive ebooks, active companions to our print texts, and full active courses. Skill-builders are a great way to help students learn or review things like discipline-specific key terms or advanced vocabulary, basic concepts, formulae and equations, theories, people, events, and dates.
Cognella currently offers the following types of skill-builder exercises:
- flashcards
- drag the words
- fill in the blanks
- mark the words
- true/false
- multiple-choice/multiple-answer
- drag and drop
- sequencing
Whether a project is an Active Learning companion, full course, or interactive ebook,* we recommend that each of its skill-builders correspond to at least one chapter learning objective/outcome. To enhance a project, skill-builders can be used singly or in combination:
- Use one skill-builder to review each learning objective and/or main section within a chapter, or to create a separate series of self-checks.
- Use a scaffolded group or combination of skill-builders to create a powerful, more robust cumulative activity that covers multiple learning objectives, or that can be used for assessment at the end of a lesson, module, chapter, or unit.
The following sections of this Editor’s Toolkit describe each of our skill-builders, explain how they reinforce course goals, and clarify when they are especially helpful. They also provide examples by discipline to illustrate some of the many ways that skill-builders may be used.
* Apart from flashcards, all available skill-builders may be placed in-line with text in an interactive ebook and scored as self-checks. They can also be displayed separately and graded.