Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpolpKTWrp4

Please watch the video linked above that was chosen to be included in our group’s interactive learning design project. Though this video does not directly ask students to respond in a particular way, there is an innate interaction between the student and the learning material. Our group has chosen to design a course for teens about anxiety in adolescents. This means that since it will be teens who are viewing the video from Anxiety Canada (2019), students are likely to reflect on the material in the context of their own mental health experiences. Additionally, since our students will be given quizzes and a unit exam that covers all course content, students will likely make notes or summarize the video in order to make studying easier. These would all be considered learner-generated forms of interaction since they do not involve a direct interaction between the learner and fellow students or an instructor, yet still an interaction between the students and the course content (Bates, 2019). 

An activity that students could do after viewing the video includes working together in breakout rooms of about 3 students to identify a time in each group member’s life where they have personally seen anxiety to be adaptive. They might then have a small activity such as creating a mindmap or visual representation of their experiences. They could also add in feeling or emotional descriptor words that come to mind when they think about the word ‘anxiety’. 

This activity would not be graded, and further, be more directed towards getting students to reflect on what they have just watched and discuss their ideas with their peers. That being said, students might still receive a participation mark and feedback from the instructor. Feedback from instructors is extremely important when automated answers or feedback cannot be given (Bates, 2019), such as the case with this activity. Moreover an instructor could give groups feedback through a printed medium, such as email, assessing the quality of their answers and offer further examples that were not identified by the group. Additionally, an instructor could join a breakout room or zoom call with any group that is struggling to generate ideas, or understand the benefits of the assignment.

This activity would be manageable regardless of class size as each individual student will bring a different perspective and there are no “right” or “wrong” answers. I believe this activity may be a worthwhile assignment as it gives youth a potentially new perspective on anxiety that they can work to reconcile with their prior thoughts and feelings. It would be a somewhat substantial amount of work for an instructor as they will have to read through each group’s mind map and reflect on the effort that students have contributed towards its completion. Additionally, it is important for instructors to remember that they would be marking students efforts to visually represent their reflective ideas related to the video that they have watched, not simply how “good” the visual representation itself looks. However, in terms of giving students feedback, I believe this is still a manageable workload. Therefore, by completing this activity, students will have interacted with the content, fellow students, and the instructor. 

References 

Anxiety Canada. (2019). Fight Flight Freeze – Anxiety Explained For Teens [Video].YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpolpKTWrp4

Bates, A, W. (2019). Interaction. In Teaching in a Digital Age (Second edition). Pressbooks