Interactive learning

This academic year has brought new challenges with it making it more important than ever that classes whether in-person, mixed or online with e-learning utilize creative tools and methods to keep students’ interest. As schools move away from traditional lecture-filled classrooms where students are mostly silent and often unengaged, teachers are seeking alternatives with interactive online learning. 

What is interactive learning?

Simply put, interactive learning is learning that requires student participation. This participation can come through class and small group discussions as well as through exploration of the interactive learning materials they’re given in a digital classroom. 

While the wide definition of “interactive” makes designing and teaching such a lesson relatively easy, not all kinds of interactivity are equally effective for all students. Shy students, for example, are likely to benefit less from class discussions where participation is voluntary. Technology has offered a big benefit here by allowing teachers to make and use learning materials that must be actively explored.

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Benefits of Interactive Learning

Teachers work to present new information to students and give those students multiple opportunities to engage with that information, using critical thinking, cooperation, SEL and other skills in the process. These opportunities to engage are enhanced and expanded by the use of inherently interactive learning materials. The more times a student works with a given set of concepts, the more likely they are to assimilate them into their knowledge base. The value of repetition can not be overstated, and much research has been done on the positive effects of repeated learning (For useful tips, read University of Virginia Professor Bruner’s 2001 article). How many times and ways should students work with a set of information in an online classroom setting? 

How To Create Interactive Lessons 

One solution is to break the interactive learning process into three important stages my students should go through in any effective interactive lesson.

1. Initial exploration 
2. Summary and assimilation
3. Connections

Take a look at the genially below for an explanation of each stage of interactive learning.

Genially and Flipgrid: Complete interactive activities for students

A new collaboration between Genially and Flipgrid, a free online platform that allows students to reply to assignments with short videos, is making it easier for teachers to make sure their students go through all three stages of the interactive learning process in their digital classroom. 

Flipgrid’s Discovery Library is a virtual space where teachers can find ready-made activities which they can assign to students. Students can then respond to prompts offered within each activity, sending their video responses directly to their teacher. Genially is participating (of course) with its own space within the Discolibrary, filled with activities for a range of subjects and ages. New activities are being added all the time, so keep tabs on this page for new teaching aids and activities!

Now you can have students explore interactive and animated geniallys, complete with activities that require that students assimilate new knowledge, and then have them make personal connections in their video response. With the Discovery library, this whole process can happen in a single space.

For those dying to share their Genially activities with a community of educators and their interactive classrooms, the Discovery Library also allows teachers to submit topics with their own materials.

What are you waiting for? Explore Genially’s space in Flipgrid’s Discovery Library for new interactive learning games and other interactive activities and contribute your own.