Effective Online Teaching Tools

In your time as an educator, you’ve no doubt picked up effective teaching techniques. With the recent rise of eLearning, we want to help you adapt those techniques to work just as well online. We’ve already shared a few ideas like Puzzle Piece and Digital Storytelling. This week, we’re introducing Group Grid.

The Technique

In the Group Grid activity, students will create an organized, visual representation of course content and break them into separate categories. Select two or more categories from your course content and create a grid. You could choose cause and effect, problem and solution, or cost and benefit categories. Break these two categories up into the top and left columns. Then, distribute the information you want your students to sort into the grid. Task students with filling in the grid alone or in teams. Once they’re done, they can submit it for assessment or check their answers against the correct grid.

The Tool

Group Grid is a great way to get students organizing collaboratively. And that doesn’t stop once they’re online. There are many ways to shape Group Grid as an online assignment. Here are a few of our recommendations. First, students can work in a shared Google Drive. This allows them to contribute to the grid remotely and comment on their peers’ choices. Our second recommendation is any of the Office services. Excel, Word, and PowerPoint would all work well for this technique.

The Impact

When it comes to complex topics, it’s easy for students to get overwhelmed. Information overload is a very real thing. Group Grid will help your students build clear mental distinctions within the content. This is great for mental recall! And like always, anything that gets student working together is great for engagement. So what are you waiting for? Try Group Grid with your next assignment!

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