White background with illustration of students standing in front of a classroom collaborating

Teaching in the Classroom: Activities Without Technology

By Lin Yu

Classrooms nowadays are generally equipped with technology such as computers and presentation screens to assist with teaching. However, we all know that sometimes technology fails to operate as expected. This page, sourced from Yee's (2020) Interactive Techniques, introduces a variety of teaching and learning activities which require minimum or no technology for instructors to adapt to unexpected teaching situations and engage students in effective discussions.

    Student engagement is the product of motivation and active learning.

    E. Barkley

    Related content 

    Connecting Remote and Face-to-Face Students: Instructional Strategies and Learning Technology Tools

    Read more »

    Innovative Approaches to Course Design

    Read more »

    What's up?

    Preparation: Minimum

    Get students in pairs or groups and ask students to share something new happened recently if they are comfortable or something from the news to start the conversation.

    Post-it

    Preparation: Post-it notes

    Ask students to review the course content and write down one question that they have. Ask students to stick their questions to a whiteboard. You can start the class with these questions or use them throughout the lecture.

    Snowballs

    Preparation: Minimum

    Similar with Post-it, ask students to review the course content and write down one question that they have on a piece of paper (or ask students a question and get them to write down their responses). Then get students to knead the paper into a snowball. Students throw their snowballs to each other gently. When they pick up a snowball, students could review a different question or response.

    Three-part interview

    Preparation: A course-related question

    Pose the following question to the entire class: “What do you think are the three biggest issues related to ____.” Choose the student with the birthday closest to today’s date and have them stand and share their three responses to the question for one minute. Move clockwise around the room until all have shared.

    Empty outline

    Preparation: Partially empty outlines

    Distribute (or write on the whiteboard) a partially empty outline of today's lecture and ask students to fill in. Instructor can use this activity at the beginning or the end of the class.

    Fishbowl

    Preparation: Move chairs if possible, to make a fishbowl in the center

    In a Fishbowl discussion, students seated inside the “fishbowl” actively participate in a discussion by asking questions and sharing their opinions, while students standing outside listen carefully to the ideas presented. Students take turns in these roles, so that they practice being both contributors and listeners in a group discussion.

    Think break

    Preparation: A rhetorical question

    Ask a rhetorical question, and then allow some time (20 seconds – 1 minute) for students to think about the problem before demonstration or explaining. This technique encourages students to take part in the problem-solving process even when discussion isn't feasible. Having students write something down helps assure that they will in fact work on the problem.

    Updating notes

    Preparation: Minimum

    Pause presentation or lecture and ask students to share and compare their class notes so far in pairs or groups. This technique allows students to take a break from listening, reflect, interact with peers, fill in gaps, develop joint questions as well as encourages them to make better notes.

    Total physical response (TPR)

    Preparation: Questions

    Ask a question or a series of questions, instead of using classroom technology to get students to respond, ask students either stand or sit to indicate their binary answers such as True/False. Students could also go to different corners to indicate their responses to a multiple-choice question.

    Mind dump

    Preparation: Minimum

    Students write for five minutes on a topic or reading. The rule is that students need to write without stopping, even when they are running out of ideas. This helps students to put all thoughts on paper and reflect on what they know or have learned.

    Ask the winner

    Preparation: Questions

    Write a question or a problem on the blackboard or whiteboard. Ask students to silently solve the problem on the board. After revealing the answer, instruct those who got it right to raise their hands (and keep them raised); then, all other students are to talk to someone with a raised hand to better understand the question and how to solve it next time.

    Rotating chairs

    Preparation: Minimum

    During class discussions, one volunteer student “takes the microphone” at a time, then calls on the next volunteer. Each subsequent speaker must summarize the previous one’s points (or, if desired, ALL the speakers thus far) before adding original ideas.

    Sourced under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA:

    Yee, K. (2020, August 3). Interactive Techniques. https://www.usf.edu/atle/documents/handout-interactive-techniques.pdf