Gallery Walk – An active engagement exercise

A course can start with an activity to assess the students’ expectations. This is a way of adapting the needs and concerns of the student to the topics that will be addressed during the course. 

The proposed activity can be a GALLERY WALK (see Image 1), consisting of the following:

• Participants organised into small groups, choosing a representative/leader.
• Each group should circulate through different Flip Chart Boards, spread around the room, where they will find different topics, related to the questions to be evaluated at the beginning of the session. On each of these Flip Chart Boards, each group must write their comment/considerations, resulting from the small group discussion, regarding the topics.
• After all the groups have gone through all the topics, the representative/leader should summarize, to the larger group, the analysis of each theme where they ended the “journey”.

By identifying the initial issues, the students can relate to the process of finding solutions, as the course topics are presented. So, the students reach the learning outcomes of the course in a more meaningful way.

Starting this learning experience as group, leads them to share the same concerns and to identify themselves, in a standardised way, with the contents to be developed. 

This first activity can be translated into the online format, using:

• a videoconference platform that provides breakout rooms (Ex.: Teams, Zoom)
• Google Jamboard tool, which allows the creation of several whiteboards where different groups can write, use post-its, draw or insert images.