Beispielszenario: Lektüreaufgaben
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Digital support for reading assignments
Reading all kinds of texts is a central part of studying. Here we would like to introduce you to a few methods you can use to make reading tasks more varied, bringing some diversity to everyday learning while also addressing the specific skills you want to promote in your teaching.
All of the methods presented here can be worked on asynchronously, enabling collaborative work despite distance, quarantine, and server overload. For each example, we make a suggestion on how you can collect the results and provide feedback on them. The exercise is central to this, but other tools can also show their potential here.
Translate a text (or excerpts thereof) into another format.
Example tasks:
- Turn the magazine article into an interview with the author.
- Write a press release about the main point of the text.
- Write the short story as a wiki.
What do you learn from this?
- By asking questions about the text and answering them at the same time, learners
- identify the relevant aspects of the text and
- analyze the text for completeness and coherence
- find their own words for the content
- memorize the important aspects better than by simply reading
This type of task is basically suitable for any subject. Depending on the formats you choose, the task can focus more on language or content. Just give it a try.
Learners can upload their results in an exercise. There, teachers can either view them directly or first initiate a peer feedback process, which may result in revisions.
Reading a text from different perspectives
Sample task: Read the short story through the eyes of different people:
- Linguistics: Which words are interesting or need to be clarified? Which speech acts occur?
- History: Which references to history are apparent?
- Political science: Which relationships play a role? Which interests come into play and how?
- Law: Which crimes or administrative offenses are committed?
...
What does this teach us?
By looking at a text from different perspectives, learners
- Perceive the diversity of perspectives
- Explore the complexity of the text
- Become aware of the diversity of academic cultures and their commonalities.
Such a task will vary depending on the text, but in any case can be divided among several people, who then collect their results on a wiki page, for example, and then discuss the connections that need to be made between the pages, for example on the phone or in the comments.
Another way to implement the different glasses is the “perspectivity” method, which involves reading texts in different roles.
A detailed description of the method can be found in the corresponding method sheet.
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Task: Visualize the text
Examples:
Create a flow chart for the experiment described in the article.:
Analyze the political speech with a word cloud.
What can you learn from this?
By visualizing a text, learners
- Identify key elements of the text
- Work out connections
- Link different forms of media representation
- Deepen and expand your understanding of the content
It is also conceivable to search for images to illustrate content and explain why you feel this image is appropriate for the text. There are many ways in which visualizations can be used for text work.
Here, too, you can collect the results in the exercise and have them evaluated by peer feedback.
Example task: Read the text and be prepared to answer questions about it...
OR: Formulate five multiple-choice questions that you would use to test comprehension of the text.
Tests can be used to check whether reading a text has promoted the level of understanding among learners that you hoped to achieve by assigning the reading. Text questions can also help teachers to gain certainty about the learning objectives and thus create transparency of requirements for learners.
Tests do not have to be written at the same time, nor are they limited to a certain number of attempts.
By using a question pool, you can also allow learners to come up with their own questions that will appear in the test at the end. This saves you work and activates the learners.
Example task: Write a definition of the concept of reason as the philosopher in the text would write it.
What does one learn from this?
By writing a definition of a concept that is important in the text, learners
- Examine the text for clues that may contribute to the definition.
- Focus on essential aspects to keep the definition as concise as possible.
- Distinguish the term from other terms.
...
This task can be practiced in all subjects.
If you collect the definitions in a glossary, different learners can take care of different terms and thus collaboratively create a collection. The nice thing about the collection on the learning platform is that you can check the definitions before the learners take them in. In addition, the Glossary object allows multiple definitions per term, so you can compare definitions from different contexts or, for example, from different philosophers on one page.
Sample task: Become an expert on the topic. Read the chapter of the book and use what you have read to prepare a list of frequently asked questions for your research community.
What do you learn from this?
By asking questions about the text and answering them at the same time, learners
- Identify the relevant aspects of the text
- Analyze the text for completeness and coherence
- Find your own words to describe the content
An FAQ can be prepared by the learners or created live using a forum. Provide learners with a forum where they can help each other answer questions. In addition, discussion questions can be opened as topics by both teachers and learners.
Sample assignment: Write a column. In a weekly column, explain the relevance of the text you have read to the main question for the semester.
What do you learn from this?
By regularly writing free texts on readings related to a topic, learners
- reflect on your understanding of the topic
- articulate and justify your opinion
- regularly and thoroughly examine a question
- identify relevant keywords that are helpful for making connections and clustering information
With the Blog object, collaborative weblogs can be created at the course level and individual weblogs can be created in the personal area. These are very well suited for such a scenario, as they can be subscribed to, commented on, and tagged by learners. Entries in the blog are also sorted by date, so that regular work and the development of a differentiated opinion are always visible to learners and teachers.
Tip: Blogs can also be submitted in the Exercise.