Learning Activities
Provide meaningful opportunities to practice, engage, reflect, and build toward course outcomes.
Designing Opportunities for Practice, Engagement, and Growth
Learning activities are the experiences that help students build knowledge, practice skills, engage with ideas, and prepare for assessments. Activities move beyond simple content delivery by creating opportunities for students to think critically, apply concepts, collaborate with others, reflect on their learning, and make meaning from their experiences.
Assessments measure what students should be able to do, learning activities provide the practice and support students need to develop those abilities over time.
The foundation
Start with Alignment
Learning activities are the bridge between outcomes and assessments. Their job is to give students the practice and preparation they need to succeed on course assessments.
| Learning Outcome | Learning Activity | Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Analyze ethical dilemmas in healthcare | Small-group case study discussion | Written case analysis |
| Design a research proposal | Proposal workshop with peer feedback | Research proposal submission |
| Evaluate competing arguments | Structured debate or Socratic seminar | Position paper |
| Apply statistical methods to real data | Guided practice with sample datasets | Data analysis project |
Active learning
Engagement Over Consumption
Students learn more effectively when they actively engage with ideas rather than only receiving information. Reading, watching videos, and listening to lectures can provide important foundational knowledge, but deeper learning typically happens when students are asked to do something with that knowledge.
Even small moments of interaction and reflection can significantly improve engagement and retention.
- Reading without a task
- Watching a video
- Copying notes
- Re-reading material
- Applying concepts to cases
- Reflecting on experiences
- Peer review
- Creating or revising work
- Explaining their thinking
This doesn’t mean eliminating lectures or readings, it means designing intentional moments before, during, and after those experiences that ask students to intentionally engage with content and make connections.
Types of activities
Matching Activities to Purpose
Different activities serve different purposes in the learning process. The table below offers a practical starting point for choosing activities that match what students need to do at each stage.
| Purpose | Examples of Learning Activities |
|---|---|
| Build foundational understanding | Guided reading questions, annotated readings, mini-lectures with embedded checks, concept mapping |
| Practice application | Case studies, simulations, problem-solving exercises, labs, worked examples with reflection |
| Encourage reflection | Journals, muddiest point activities, exit tickets, discussion prompts, self-assessments |
| Foster collaboration | Peer review, group projects, structured debates, jigsaw activities, think-pair-share |
| Support retrieval & reinforcement | Practice quizzes, flashcard activities, concept maps, retrieval practice exercises |
| Prepare for assessment | Draft workshops, outline reviews, practice presentations, scaffolded assignments, peer feedback |
Reflection & the Ignatian tradition
Creating Space for Meaning-Making
Reflection is a central component of Ignatian pedagogy. Learning activities can create intentional space for students to pause, make meaning of their experiences, and connect course concepts to broader questions, values, and contexts.
Reflection does not always need to be lengthy or formal. Short reflective prompts, discussion activities, self-assessments, or application questions can help students deepen understanding and become more aware of their own learning process.
The prompts below can be adapted for discussion posts, journal entries, exit tickets, or in-class activities. Flip to see how each connects to student growth.
Accessibility & inclusion
Designing for All Learners
Students engage in learning in different ways. Learning activities are often where participation barriers first emerge.
Common participation barriers include how...
- content is presented
- students are expected to contribute
- complex tasks are structured
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a practical framework for addressing these barriers proactively.
UDL asks three questions about every learning experience:
Online & face-to-face
Designing Across Modalities
The principles of effective learning activity design apply across face-to-face and online courses, but the strategies for putting those principles into practice look different depending on the modality. The most important question is the same in any context: what will students actually do, and how does that prepare them for what the course asks them to demonstrate?
| Activity Purpose | Face-to-Face | Online / Hybrid |
|---|---|---|
| Discussion & dialogue | Socratic seminar, think-pair-share, small group discussion | Threaded discussion boards, video responses, live synchronous breakouts |
| Reflection | Exit tickets, in-class journaling, minute paper | Weekly reflection posts, self-assessment quizzes, video journals |
| Collaboration | Group projects, peer review workshops, labs | Collaborative documents, peer review tools in Canvas, group discussion threads |
| Application & practice | In-class case studies, simulations, problem sets | Scenario-based modules, practice quizzes, guided activities in Canvas |
Learning activities & AI
Using AI to Deepen Thinking, Not Replace It
AI tools are becoming increasingly present in how students approach coursework. Rather than treating this as a threat to academic integrity, faculty can design learning activities that embrace AI as a thinking partner while making student reflection, process, and original reasoning the center of the work.
- Use AI as a starting point, not an endpoint. Activities that ask students to critique, revise, or build on AI-generated content require them to engage their own judgment and disciplinary knowledge.
- Make process visible. Activities that require students to document their thinking (notes, drafts, decision logs, reflections) center the learning that AI struggles to replicate.
- Design for conversation. Low-stakes discussion-based and collaborative activities require students to respond to each other in real time, something that is genuinely and irreducibly theirs.
- Ask discipline-specific questions. Activities grounded in specific course texts, datasets, case studies, or contexts are often harder to shortcut because they require actual engagement with your course material.
Common challenges
What to Avoid & Why
- ✗Activities that don’t connect to outcomes or assessments. Busy work erodes engagement. If students can’t see why an activity matters, they are more likely to passively interact or cognitively offload.
- ✗All passive, no active. A course built entirely on readings and lectures gives students information but limited opportunity to interact or practice using it. Even small moments of active engagement (a discussion prompt, a brief application task) can improve retention and preparation significantly.
- ✗Activities pitched at a lower cognitive level than the assessment. If students only practice recall but the exam requires analysis, the activities haven’t prepared them for what they’re being asked to do.
- ✗Collaboration without structure. Group work that lacks clear roles, expectations, and individual accountability often frustrates students and produces uneven learning. Structure makes collaboration more equitable and effective.
- ✗No low-stakes practice before high-stakes assessment. Students benefit from opportunities to try, receive feedback, and adjust before their work is formally evaluated. Building in practice checkpoints deepens understanding and improves performance.
A Jesuit lens
Activities That Form, Not Just Inform
The Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm envisions learning as a cycle of experience, reflection, and action. Learning activities are where that cycle comes to life. When activities ask students to engage with real problems, reflect on their own thinking and values, collaborate with others, and consider how their learning connects to the world beyond the classroom, they become more than practice - they become part of the formation process.
Thoughtfully designed activities can support our Jesuit values by fostering curiosity, reflection, discernment, collaboration, and meaningful engagement. This doesn’t require adding a separate “Jesuit component” to every activity. It means asking yourself: Does this activity create an opportunity for students to think, connect, reflect, and grow?
Next: Learning Materials