Tutorials

Tutorials provide direct  instruction and  practice interactions. Instruction is made engaging through the use of videos, animations, interactive timelines, and  hotspot graphics. Practice  interactions—including drag-and-drops, ordered problem solvers, multiple-choice questions, and  fill-in-the-blank  questions—all help students check their progress on mastering new concepts. Some  tutorials  also include  web links to informational sites, games, and  videos,  which are designed to broaden students’ access to information on the topic.

Lesson Activities

These   written assignments allow students to develop new learning in a constructivist way or apply learning from the tutorial  in a significant  way. In either   case,  Lesson Activities are designed to be an authentic learning and  assessment tool: doing something real to develop new understanding, while at the same  time providing a subjective measure of that understanding. Lesson Activities are embedded in the tutorials   and  supply a document for offline use by students to write a response or record results.  Each activity has an answer   key that provides  answers  for single-answer questions and  objective rubrics or sample answers  for open-ended questions. Students  submit  some  activities through the Digital Drop Box for teacher evaluation and  feedback. Other activities can be checked by students themselves using the answer  key. Keep in mind that some students may need guidance to successfully self-check   open-ended questions against a model.

Online Discussions

Online  discussion  with teachers and  other students is a key twenty-first-century skills-based activity that allows for higher-order thinking about terminal  objectives. An online threaded discussion mirrors the educational experience of a classroom discussion.

Teachers can initiate a discussion by asking a complex, open-ended question. Students can respond to the question as well as to the responses of other students. Each unit in a class has one predefined discussion topic along  with a rubric for grading responses. Teachers can include  additional discussion topics.

Unit Activities

The culminating activity at the end  of  each  unit aims to deepen understanding of some key unit objectives and  tie them  together, or tie them  to other class concepts. This activity also includes authentic performance and   supports twenty-first-century skills development. The student version includes a  simple  rubric , if   appropriate, while teacher versions  can contain more  complex rubrics, answer  keys, and  modeled sample answers.  Unit activities supply a document for offline use by students to write a response or record results.