Making Learning Visual: Helping Students Engage
Engage Students Encourage Interaction
Learn Together
Boston University Academy Uses Visual Classrooms to Improve Teaching and Learning
Visual Classrooms provided the breakthrough Gary Garber needed to help students understand the concepts behind the formulas in his physics class. Everyone’s ideas were visible for the class to see, interact with, and learn from. This enabled students to work on teaching themselves and each other the material.
Boston University Academy is an elite private high school located on the Boston University campus geared toward college preparatory work. testimony
Millennials are asynchronous kids. They’ve been raised in a world of online interaction and communication and often feel more comfortable opening up virtually. Once they do, then they are more willing to take greater risks in face-to-face discussions. Shy students become more active and engaged in class because they can work at their own pace. This would not have been possible without Visual Classrooms.
- Gary Garber, Boston University Academy
Experiences
In spite of amazing lectures, Gary was frustrated that his students weren’t often ready for or engaged in his class. Using Visual Classrooms, he was able to connect lectures, labs, homework, and group projects to extend learning beyond the classroom and engage with students’ experiences and goals.
In one Visual Classrooms activity, Garber asked students to demonstrate their knowledge of physics to design a musical instrument. They made use of the sketch pad to show how they would vary the tone and loudness of their instrument. Groups used tags to critique or reference classmates' ideas.
With Visual Classrooms, Garber’s students don’t need to wait weeks or days before receiving feedback on their work. He can see what they know and don’t know right on the screen. He gives frequent and immediate online feedback to students, and then they talk about it in class. Garber’s classroom became a real community where students could openly share their thinking, make mistakes, help each other learn, and discover new connections between ideas.