- What are your course learning goals? What skills and ways of thinking do you want your students to practice?
- How will you cultivate buy-in and enthusiasm for active learning?
- How will you scaffold activities so students are set up to struggle productively? How will you navigate group dynamics?
- What will students need to do outside of class, and how will you hold them accountable for the work done in class?
- How will students receive frequent feedback, and how will you assess their learning?
01Mar’22
In a SAIL class students actively engage with course content through structured activities during class time. However, what students are asked to do, both in and out of class, and how these classes are structured can vary dramatically depending on the instructor's learning goals.
This page includes considerations for designing and structuring a SAIL course, as well as resources and advice from Penn Faculty on communicating the value of SAIL with your students. To learn more about how other faculty are using SAIL or to be connected with other faculty using SAIL at Penn, email CETLI.
Considerations for Designing a SAIL Course
Communicating the Value of Active Learning
An essential element of SAIL course design is cultivating student buy-in and enthusiasm for active learning. You can communicate the value of SAIL by using intentional language in the syllabus and making time for conversations about SAIL in class.
Here are examples from Penn faculty on how to talk about SAIL with your students:
- Syllabus Language, LING 0600: Introduction to Sociolinguistics: "This course is a SAIL course, which stands for Structured, Active, In-class Learning. Instead of only listening to lectures and taking tests, you will have opportunities to learn by engaging in the same kinds of activities that working sociolinguists do every day: reading papers, discussing case studies, collecting and analyzing data, and writing reports about what you have learned. And just like a working sociolinguist, you will do a lot of these activities collaboratively with others.”
- Research on the value of Active Learning to share with students:This research details an example of how to structure the in-class and out-of-class components of a SAIL course, as well as the rationales for the pedagogical choices made.
- Communication examples for SAIL: This document includes the ways Jane Dmochowski of Earth and Environmental Sciences uses the syllabus, a welcome email, and her course learning objectives to explain the purpose and value of SAIL to her students.
Advice from Penn Faculty
- SAIL classrooms are nice but not necessary. Any room where two or three students can sit and talk to each other can be an active learning space.
- CETLI staff can be helpful in brainstorming ways to do active learning in traditional classrooms and lecture halls.
- Whether you have a SAIL or non-SAIL room, make sure you connect with your local IT person to learn the room features such as microphones. It gets loud.
- Demonstrate an idea using lecture, then have students engage in an activity related to the idea. Ask them which is more effective.
- Be sure to do an engaging SAIL activity on the first day and narrate the experience to show students how SAIL works.
- Give students the education research data on learning outcomes in active learning versus traditional lectures.
- Explain that SAIL is about skill-building, like learning a musical instrument or riding a bike. You can’t learn by watching, and it takes time to adjust.
- Be explicit in showing students that the questions on quizzes, homework, and exams closely reflect their in-class work.
- Select TAs and LAs who are familiar with active learning or have been part of SAIL courses themselves.
- Meet with your TAs and LAs frequently to discuss the activities and any issues with group dynamics they are seeing in the classroom.
- Be explicit with your team about what they should do during class, such as circulating the room, engaging groups, and encouraging collaboration.
- Encourage your SAIL teaching and learning assistants to participate in CETLI’s SAIL TA Training, which highlights skills for facilitating group work.