Small group teaching: ideas and templates

Are you looking for ideas to engage your students in your tutorials? Look no more. The new small group teaching activities online toolkit provides a collection of ideas and templates to promote active learning with small groups.

The toolkit was originally developed as a paper resource by Leonie Fleischmann, a lecturer in the department of International Politics. It was adapted for online use by LEaD’s Educational Technology Team. It contains concrete examples of activities suitable for different parts of the seminar (opening, intermediate and closing activities). Lecturers will also find ready-to-print templates for some of the activities. Each activity states how long it should take to prepare and implement and what format(s) the activity is suitable for: individual, pair, group or whole-class work.

Why this toolkit?

Leonie explains:

“As teachers, our responsibility is to encourage our students to engage, facilitate full participation, account for learning differences and help them develop their skills. Activities are useful in achieving all these aims”.

The toolkit aims to support you in developing activities that support these goals, while also considering how precious time is for many of you. It is a very practical resource, with clear navigation which helps you to quickly find useful resources which are relevant to your learning outcomes.

The activities presented have been tried in context by Leonie in her teaching and will particularly suit subjects involving ideas, discussions and debates. The Education Technology Team is planning to add more resources to this toolkit in the upcoming weeks so please check it regularly for brand new ideas!

You can find the toolkit here: blogs.city.ac.uk/smallgroupteaching

If you have any ideas for small group teaching activities that could be added to the blog or if you have any ideas for educational projects involving educational technologies then please drop us an email and we will be happy to work with you.