The Penn State Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology is both an annual event and a year-round online discussion of ways that faculty and staff are using technology to enhance teaching, learning, and research.
This session discusses strategies using iPads to bring the opportunity for self-led learning often found in online courses into a collaborative learning format for face-to-face and hybrid classrooms. Doing so allows instructors to combine the affordances of exploratory learning and close knowledge of individual student learning styles found in online environments with the benefits of in-person scaffolding and synchronous feedback afforded by hybrid and face-to-face formats.
The session will begin with an open discussion of the benefits of self-led and collaborative learning, barriers to introducing them in the face-to-face classroom, and discussion of the role of explicit instruction when such activities are being used. Following, I will share examples of how I have used iPads in the classroom to engage students in a variety of activities, including research, the creation of documents such as media releases and advertisements, the creation and delivery of presentations, and more. Finally, I will share student feedback on using iPads in the classroom, and how such activities can be adapted to different formats to create consistency across varying modes of delivery for the same class.
