This course includes many interactive opportunities where students can strengthen their knowledge and practice using the concepts taught in the course. Research has shown that this type of learn-by-doing approach has a significant positive impact on learning. Interactive opportunities come in multiple forms:
Practice Questions
Practice questions appear on most pages in the course, embedded in the main text of the page. The purpose of these questions is different than questions on self-checks or quizzes, which are designed to see if the student has mastered the concept. Instead, practice questions allow students to learn by interacting with the concepts they are learning about. For example, a practice question might present a student with a scenario and ask them to apply the concept that they have just read about.
These practice questions do not count for a grade, and getting the answer “wrong” can be just as valuable to the learning process as answering correctly, as practice questions often address common student misconceptions and give students immediate feedback intended to correct those misconceptions.
Activities
In addition to practice questions, the course contains select opportunities for additional learning by doing in the form of more extensive interactive activities. These often occur at places in the course where instructors report that students tend to struggle, or where data shows that students need extra support.
| Module | Interactive | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Module 1: Motivating Success | Characteristics of Successful Students | This short 20-question quiz covers some important characteristics that impact student success. Students gain insight into the characteristics they have already and where they might need to build some new habits. |
| Module 2: Goal Setting and Time Management | Identify Your Time Management Style | Students work through a short questionnaire to determine if their time management style more closely aligns with the early bird, the pressure cooker, the balancing act, or the improviser. |
| Module 3: Career Exploration | Resume Writing | Students receive guidance on effective résumés and assess existing résumés for their effectiveness. |
| Module 4: Community and Diversity | Intersectionality | Students are presented with historical background and the meaning of the term intersectionality along with several scenarios in which intersectional identity is considered. |
| Module 4: Community and Diversity | Communicating with Instructors | Students are presented with scenarios they may face in college (e.g., needing to ask their professor for clarification in a class), and given advice and feedback on how they should approach each scenario. |
| Module 5: Thinking and Analysis | Logic | Students are given several practice opportunities to solidify their understanding of argument validity. This practice opportunity allows students to check their understanding of logical arguments, a fundamental topic for understanding thinking and analysis in their college career and beyond. |
| Module 7: Learning Strategies | Active Reading | Students are asked to practice active learning in their reading assignments by first reading text by a published author and then answering a multiple choice question. |
| Module 8: Study Skills | How to Make a Quotation Sandwich | Students practice how to transition into a quotation, use a signal phrase, insert the quotation, construct a citation, and state the relevance of the quotation to the argument. |
| Module 9: Testing and Test Strategies | Testing and Test Strategies | Students are given a number of different scenarios in which a student’s approach to testing is not ideal, and is then asked to identify what the student should be doing instead. |
| Module 10: Health Management | Health Management Inventory | Students answer questions to assess their health around eating, sleeping, stress, and depression. |
| Module 11: Financial Management | Financial Management | Students walk through various scenarios, assessing the choices each person made in their financial situations. |
