The basic tenet of active learning is that students learn better when they are doing something! Here are a few versatile active learning activities you can easily mould to fit your tutorial’s content, use up time, and keep the pressure off of you!

Think, Pair, Share

This is a very popular activity that can be used in large lecture-sized classrooms or smaller tutorial sections. Select one or two discussion questions and put them on the board/projector. Give students one to two minutes to “think” alone by writing down their thoughts on the question on a piece of paper (this step relieves pressure from more introverted or contemplative students who are less likely to answer right away). Next, ask students to pair with someone next to them and discuss the differences/similarities in their answers. Finally, go around the room selected some or all of the pairs and have them share back to the class as a whole. Several ideas will be tossed around quickly and efficiently, and introverted and extroverted students alike will be able to be engaged. This activity can easily use up 5-20 minutes of your tutorial time.

Jigsaw

This is an excellent activity for quick concept mastery. Put students in large groups of 6 — this is their “Home Group.” Then, number each group member from 1-6 — this is their “Expert” number. After being assigned an Expert Group, students split off to meet the same Expert from other Home Groups in their new Expert Group. Each Expert Group has the task of mastering ONE concept — for example, in a grammar class, Expert Groups could be “Uses of the comma” and/or “Uses of the semicolon.” After 20-30 minutes, ask the Expert Groups to split off back to their Home Groups — when the Home Groups reconvene, they will now have a member from each Expert Group to share back what they learned on their expert concepts.