{"id":9223,"date":"2022-06-21T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-21T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/tel\/?p=9223"},"modified":"2022-06-14T16:19:45","modified_gmt":"2022-06-14T15:19:45","slug":"the-online-global-festival-of-active-learning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/tel\/2022\/06\/21\/the-online-global-festival-of-active-learning\/","title":{"rendered":"The online Global Festival of Active Learning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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In 2022 the Active Learning Network<\/a>, with the University of Sussex, Anglia Ruskin University, University of Glasgow, the University of Coventry and other key universities, hosted the second Global Online Festival of Active Learning. The Active Learning Network is a global community supporting the development of teaching and assessment practices that encourage students to take active approaches to their learning. The festival itself is a chance to celebrate playful and innovative strategies for active learning and to showcase approaches to teaching and assessment that others can adopt in their own teaching context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The festival was attended by over one hundred and eighty participants from seventy different institutions. Feedback was overwhelming positive about the event and comments included: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am loving this festival and want to thank the organisers, other presenters, and participants. Such a great community of practice. So inspiring!<\/em><\/p>

Really impressive and imaginative use of synchronous and asynchronous modalities.<\/em><\/p>

Fun and engaging as well as meaningful.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Like last year, the festival ran ‘breakfast’ sessions between 9am and 10am and ‘tea time’ sessions between 5pm and 6pm. The idea of these times is that UK participants can join the sessions without interrupting their work day; to encourage people living in eastern nation timezones to join our morning sessions and people living in western nation time zones to join our evening sessions. This idea has been very popular with attendees with over one thousand three hundred sign-ups for different sessions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Technologies<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The festival made extensive use of ‘free’ social technologies, which allowed easy sharing and re-use of texts and materials. For example, contributors to the festival built their slides to create their submission, which then formed part of the programme. The technologies included Eventbrite for booking, Google Slides for the programme<\/a>, Google Forms for feedback and Wonder.me metaverse for networking and socialising. The University of Sussex Zoom account was used to create ‘Jamming tents’ for the sessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sessions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The online festival ran two types of event: synchronous ‘Jam’ events where we all met together to engage in activities, discuss and build artefacts, usually co-creating digital resources, and asynchronous ‘Moshpit’ events where we engaged in activities and built artefacts in our own time throughout the week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ‘Jam’ events<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There were twenty-six ‘Jam’ events (including the launch party and closing finale) and there were two or three parallel sessions running at one time. All the sessions were highly interactive with many collaborative writing activities, collage creation and role play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many active learning tools were introduced with the technologies that supported them. To name but a few:<\/p>\n\n\n\n