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Having Fun in the Classroom . . . Celeste Fenton

Edutainment, the combination of educational objectives with entertaining presentation techniques is expected to be one of the hottest industries in the next decade. According to Miriam R. Diamond, Ph.D , Assistant Director and Adjunct Faculty at the Center for Effective University Teaching at Northeastern University there are a multitude of ways to provide a fun atmosphere that increases student engagement, retention of information, and learning.

1. Articulate goals for the class.
2. Keeping goals in mind, brainstorm ways of teaching the subject matter.
3. Think about the background/material needed. Is training on virtual reality programs or information literacy needed? Could another faculty member, student assistant or business associate help run the lesson plan? Maybe - for one week - class meeting times could be rearranged to be able to re-create the dinner time of centuries ago - or to have students build their concept of the Moon-based community. Think about ways to make the idea workable, and make modifications as necessary.
4. Draw upon students' talents and contributions. Students should be the key part of this experience. Ask them to help design the virtual-reality web page, or prepare the classroom to foster a particular experience. Assign them roles to research and represent, from people from a particular era, to historical events - or even scientific phenomena. This can be an active learning experience they talk about years from now!
5. Assess! Plan a means of getting feedback on the effectiveness of this method in helping students master the subject matter. Exam questions on the material, survey students about what they feel they learned, or assign reflection papers based on the experience. Compare the level of understanding of the "creative-experience" students with former classes who were exposed to the material in a more traditional format. See what worked, and why.
   
   Keeping the class exciting for students also makes the class interesting for the teacher. Denise C. Camin, Associate Professor of English at DeVry University offers this learning activity from her freshman English class: My freshman English class does a "cause/effect" writing assignment that encompasses primary research. In groups of three or four, students decide on a research question and pose a hypothesis. Then they design an experiment or survey focusing on eliciting information about their issue, which they then use this to collect data. Once the data has been collected, they look at the results and begin to make "sense" out of the information, seeing whether their initial hypothesis was proven or disproved. The groups then write a draft of their findings, peer review the drafts of other groups, create a graphic illustration to accompany their final document, and revise the draft based on the feedback they've received. The fun part is the survey/experiment process.
   
   Students like seeing the practical application of writing and enjoy coming up with a clever topic. This term one group designed a candy experiment (looking at ten candy bars which had been halved, identify the bar by sight and smell alone), while two others focused on infidelity (one focused on the different perception of men and women, while the other focused on which gender "cheats" more). Past classes have examined how many licks to reach the center of a tootsie pop, whether gender affects taste discrimination, conforming behavior (when asked to choose between diet and regular when only diet is offered in a blind taste test, choose one as regular), cheating (school focus), student schedules and the effect on performance, sleep deprivation, sexual harassment, dating violence, etc.
   
   Dr. Camin encourages her students to adopt a CSI approach to observation and cause and effect. She explains, We discuss the idea of practical research and thorough exploration of the facts&they [students] decide on a phenomenon to observe, either simply observing some event or behavior, or creating a situation and observing resulting behavior. Past observations include gauging the attitudes of mall personnel to shoppers of various races, gender, or apparel, and staging persistence events (a silver dollar, quarter, or half a dollar bill is glued under a vending machine and peoples attempts to retrieve the money are recorded)."