How can you engage students in higher order thinking?

3 mins read
Sasha Novacek

As teachers in a 21st century classroom we are discouraged from utilising the conventional ‘chalk and talk’ method, which simply fills our students’ brains with knowledge. Instead of teaching students ‘what’ to think, we are now implored to ignite a spark of curiousity and teach them ‘how’ to think. These higher order thinking skills are necessary for students to break through the saturated nature of our current ‘information age’.

Learning experiences that incorporate higher order thinking negate the frustration that is traditionally experienced by students when they are required to demonstrate their understanding through the recall of memorised facts. Rather than merely absorbing information to satisfy standardised testing, students now have the opportunity to apply their learnings to real-life contexts using problem solving, critical thinking and transfer skills.

There is currently, however, a deficiency of higher order thinking in classrooms across the nation. Many teachers and students are bogged down and are experiencing frustration with activities that are geared towards lower order thinking.

At ClickView, we are addressing this gap through our latest release of interactive videos. Using video education, we have provided teachers with a way to engage students in higher order thinking. Teachers simply:

  1. Choose a video
  2. Add questions
  3. And assess knowledge

This marks a genuinely exciting and significant step towards increasing the level of higher order thinking that occurs within our classrooms.

Teachers can now take any video, be it from our Curriculum Library, broadcast content on the Exchange or a video of their own, and add an interactive layer over the video. The interactive layer takes the form of built-in questions or problems that are presented to the students as they are viewing the video. Teachers have full control to write and place the questions/answers into their newly-made interactive video. Students are required to answer the questions in order to proceed and watch the video.

Interactive video question types
Select from one of six question types to add into your interactive video

Encourage higher order thinking with interactive videos

What makes interactive videos so exciting is that they enable students to engage more deeply with video content, forcing them to think actively. Contrary to traditional video, interactive videos encourage students to seek clarity, link their prior knowledge with new concepts, consider different perspectives, and to make their learning visible. A passive viewing experience has now been turned into an active learning experience.

Schools across the nation are already using interactive videos to flip the classroom or to deliver independent or collaborative learning experiences during class time. The use of open-ended questions, for example, require students to generate extended responses and draws upon the their skills to recall information, critically reflect and solve new problems.

Interactive video long response
Higher order thinking is encouraged through long response questions

“A passive viewing experience has now been turned into an active learning experience.”

Video is one way in which we can equip students with the higher order thinking skills and knowledge that is required to think and solve problems at a level that is far beyond memorising facts. ClickView is revolutionising learning through video and it’s our job as educators to give them this opportunity to prepare them for life outside of school.

You can read the full details about ClickView Interactive Videos here, or if you would like to create your own interactive video today, sign in to ClickView Online, select any one of the videos from the Curriculum Library or Exchange, and click on the “Create a new interactive video” button.

Create new interactive video
Create an interactive video from any video in ClickView

If you do not have a ClickView account, please feel free to contact us to get started: info@clickview.co.uk