Quick Guide: Creating Active Learning Content – Page 6

Tables, figures, and images can all be strong foundations for Active Learning activities. You can transform tables and graphics into interactive exercises in a variety of ways. For instance, you could

• Change a table into a text-based drag and drop.
• Add explanatory pop-ups to an image with hotspots.
• Require labels be added to a figure in an image-based drag and drop.

To narrow down which types of image-based activities would work best to accompany your text, think about your goals for supporting the content:

• Do you want to help students recall information about a place, object, system, or process through an image-based exercise?
• Do you want to help students delve more deeply into aspects portrayed in a graphic?

Consider whether it might be useful for students to compare two images, concentrate on specific elements of a figure, locate a particular place or places on a graphic, or sort smaller images into categories.

Then, examine the figures or images you’re considering as the foundations for Active Learning, choosing alternatives if necessary. Reviewing your chosen images should help you identify which activity types fit most organically with your available resources and your goals for supporting specific content areas.

Note: You may be able to reuse images from your manuscript in Active Learning activities or choose new images for the exercises. Remember that our licensing team must review and approve all figures and images. We require that you locate figures and images for your project and submit them for a licensing review before creating Active Learning activities based on them. (This requirement applies even if you are working on your manuscript and Active Learning simultaneously.) While awaiting the review results, you could begin by writing thematic questions that would apply to other images in case further image research is needed.

Consider how you could enhance your Active Learning activities by pairing them with audio and video resources. These resources help deepen students’ understanding, provide aural and visual variety, and encourage the inclusion of additional perspectives. To provide students with the maximum benefit, present each resource with an introductory sentence or two and at least one question to consider.

Depending on whether you would like to curate third-party materials or create your own, there are several types of audio and video content to consider using:

• Third-party audio (Spotify)
• Original audio recordings
• Third-party videos (YouTube or Vimeo)
• Original screencasts or recorded slide presentations
• Original live-action videos

Third-party resources, which must be approved by our licensing team, can be excellent additions to a project if you have concerns about limited time or bandwidth for developing original content. In contrast, original audio and/or video materials may best complement a project if it is important to address unusual topics or demonstrate particular skills or techniques.

Additional resources: For further guidance on using third-party audio and video resources, see Quick Guide: Selecting and Recording Audio and Guidelines for Selecting YouTube and Vimeo Videos. For further details regarding how to create original video recordings, check with your project editor.