Successful learning activity and one not-so-much

A successful learning activity has been a Diversity Immersion project that students participate in to learn about a culture or population with whom they have little experience. Students pick a culture, ethnic group, religion, lifestyle choice and then locate a group/club/congregation with whom they can interact. They are required to do some research about the "group", participate in at least two events/meetings/services, and interview two members of the "group". They then prepare a presentation for the rest of the class about their experience and what they learned that would be beneficial to know in the event they might work one day in a social work capacity with a person from that "group." I have seen students go from having strong negative biases about a group, to gaining a sensitive understanding and acceptance. It tends to be a powerful experience and one that most students really enjoy.

In the "Not-so-much" category is a learning activity that has worked really well with large classes, but has flopped when attempted with a small size class. The class is about group counseling. The text only covers some mainstream types of groups. I have some chapters from an alternate book that address speciality types of groups, i.e., eating disorders, feminist interventions, domestic violence, grief and loss, and substance abuse. I ask the students to break into small groups and take on one of these specialty areas and do a teach back. In my large class, there was competition and interest in being "the best." They utilized outside resources and computer graphics and put on quite a show. In the small size class I tried it with, there was a distinct lack of interest in doing anything extra. The presentations were limited to the chapters I gave them with very little outside resource information. The students talked about it being just another drudge chore. I suspect part of the problem is that there were only 2-3 students on each topic where with the larger class there were at minimum 4 students in a group so the work was spread around.