Activity types and icons

This course offers a wide range of activities which students can complete either individually or in collaboration with fellow students. Many of these activities are represented by icons, listed in the table below. Some of the icons were designed by University of Leeds and shared under Creative Commons licence CC BY. This table provides an overview:



Energizer

Energizers are short activities, meant as a warm-up exercise to get started. That's the only activity that does not ask for thorough thinking; students should just complete them spontaneously and have fun.

Exploration (also called detective activity) This exploratory activity asks students to search for information or answers. This might involve watching videos, browsing through external webpages or interpreting an info-graphic. Most of the time the students are provided with guiding questions to support their learning journey.

Note down your thoughts Students can record their learning in a Word document, a physical notebook, or share their thoughts with their fellow students in a blog. They will be encouraged to do this when reaching key points in their learning journey.

Practical activity

This activity focuses on applying learning to real-life tasks. This involves purposeful reading, which students will learn more about in Unit 2.

Q&A activity

This activity asks students either to answer a question or to find a question which leads to a given answer. Sometimes the questions will provided in quiz format. Students can repeat the quiz and won't get marked. All activities are meant for their own learning; they can practise their questioning and critical thinking skills with this type of activity.

Reading activity  This activity asks students to read a text while reflecting on guiding questions.

Reflective activity

This activity asks students to think things through critically, relate what they have learned to their own context, and make plans for how they can use this new knowledge in practice. 

This activity often comes at key points of the students' learning journey; so we encourage them to record their reflections in a Word document, a physical notebook, or share their thoughts with their fellow students in the blog. Key points are denoted by

Key point icon

Optional activity

The completion of this activity is not essential to the understanding of the course. However, we highly recommend students complete them when they have time. This will deepen their understanding and help them apply their learning. And they will very likely have fun when completing this activity!