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tags: orientation
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# tuesday, august 23: scaffolding activities and live interactions

## goals
* encounter the idea of scaffolding
* build on the work started last week in small groups, where you were thinking with other mdfs about multimedia assignment design
* in those same small groups, come up with a couple of ideas for scaffolding assignments and activities (those smaller-step activities that help students build up to a final capstone assignment)
* design an activity you'd host in the LL studio

## what is scaffolding?

Today, we're leaning into process as we think about how we can:
* support students' learning through lower-stakes activities--activities that introduce them to multimodal communication and its affordances
* design live activities and experiences that encourage students to work and share their ideas in new modes
* low-stakes/bite-sized activities that build skill for high stakes performance/creating

Scaffolding activities foregrond for students the importance of process. If we design our scaffolding activities with specific learning objectives in mind, we will help students learn from every step of the process. It's not just that students learn from making, say, a capstone assignment in a new medium (although they do learn a lot from this, too!). They should be learning from every step of the process toward that final capstone assignment.

Let's take a quick look at some models of scaffolding activities that we've shared with students. Here are two models of prompts:
* a menu of options (in the form of short prompts) for a WGS course we supported
* a longer prompt for a compare/contrast activity for an Expos course we supported

Both of these handouts can be found in the MDF_22_23_RESOURCES "Handouts" folder on G-Drive

## compare/contrast activity using live loops (mk)

Marlon will walk us through an example of a comparison/contrast activity, which asks students to compare and contrast two images before making a "bigger idea" claim that provides some new insight. They talk through this arc using Logic loops as a music bed. This activity is a great way to get students thinking through paper prototypes (like cards or images on a table), as they develop their skills in fundamental analytical moves (i.e., compare/contrast). Meanwhile, using Logic loops can really help students understand the kind of tension to resolution structure found in basically every form of academic writing. This "oral drafting" exercise also gets students to build their skills in oral presentation, which is a learning objective we see in a lot of different disciplines.

**be ready to give the oral drafting exercise a try!**

## design your activities!

We've seen an activity (thanks, Marlon!) that works really well in our studio space and that uses the studio as a tool for furthering student learning.

With that in mind, let's return to the same small groups we worked in last week to think through:
* scaffolding activities (a menu of options for students)
* an activity you could host here at the LL (a live experience for students)

### part 1: scaffolding prompt challenge
* Return to the same groups you worked in last week.
* Working in Canva, spend 15-20 minutes coming up with **a list of scaffolding activities** (try to get down 2 - 5 activities) that would help students complete an assignment in the "form" you unpacked last week
* Under each scaffolding activity heading, draft at least 1 short prompt (2 - 3 sentences). Imagine students as the audience for these prompts.

### part 2: design and demo an activity using the LL studio as a tool
* In these same groups and using the list of scaffolding activities you've come up with, plan **one activity that you could imagine hosting in the LL studio and run a demo of it with all of us**!