What are choice boards and why do we use them? 

     The first time that I saw a choice board during my education studies, it lit a spark in me! It looked like a tic-tac-toe board and provided a menu of learning options. I have since used choice boards for lesson plans. It is a reminder that there is no one size that fits all with education and that there are many ways for people to gain knowledge and skills and to express their knowledge and skills. Choice boards can be used in corporate training (for business and professional development needs) and education (K-12 and higher education) environments. Choice boards are powerful tools that can accomplish several important things: 

Empower Learners  to Design Their Own Learning Experience: 

     Choice is empowering as the responsibility shifts to the learner to determine how they learn and how the learning is assessed. When we create an environment with choice, the learner feels more in control of his or her learning journey. 

Promote Active Learning: 

    Active learning is student-centered. The student is placed in an active role and is not a passive recipient of information. Many learning environments follow an instructor-led or trainer-led formula. The student knows he or she will be provided with information and then get tested on it. It is important for educators and/or trainers to think beyond this formula. How will learners use their knowledge moving forward in their lives? We must challenge them to use higher-order thinking skills. This involves evaluating, synthesizing, and analyzing information. This goes beyond recall and involves the application of knowledge. 

Engage in Multimodal Learning: 

    Multimodal learning can involve the five senses: see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. It allows a learner to experience more than one way of one learning. For example, written text is heavily relied on in education and training environments. It is just one approach though. I recently worked with a high school student who expressed that he did not understand what a sundial was after reading about it. It wasn’t until we looked at images of a sundial together that he understood what it was. The written text was not enough for him. 

    It is important to remember that people have different learning styles or preferred ways to learn. Some people prefer learning through visuals, others through kinesthetic means. Educational psychologists discuss a variety of learning styles. For the purposes of this blog, I will focus on the following four: Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic, and Read/Write. 

    The visual learner would appreciate photos and drawings of concepts. The auditory learner would enjoy an audiobook or a podcast. The kinesthetic learner would value hands-on activities such as a science lab, using manipulatives, or building a model. The Read/Write learner would be excited to read a book and then take notes on the reading. These are just some examples of how to incorporate different learning styles to enhance student learning. There are many more out there.  A learner would benefit from using more than one modality. Personally, all these modalities would help me to grasp concepts that I am learning for the first time. 

     Students I have worked with have expressed that they understand concepts better through more than one modality. Multimodal learning improves comprehension and retention of information. 

Example Choice Board : 

    The below choice board serves as one example. There are many ways to customize a choice board based on the goals of a course or lesson. The below choice board is on the topic of “Climate Change” with a focus on understanding the content using a multimodal approach.

 How The Choice Board Works: 

    A learner can select an activity from any of the rows from the columns “Learn”, “Apply” and “Reflect”. The learner’s selection reflects his or her learning style. The learner should choose one activity from each row. He/she can also complete more than one item in a row. The learner could select a “Read” Activity and a “Kinesthetic” Activity, for example. 

Adobe Captivate 13 is excellent for creating an interactive choice board: 

Below are the features in Adobe Captivate 13 that you can use to create an interactive choice board.  

#1: To create the choice board menu: create shapes and turn them into menu buttons. 

#2: Menu Button Navigation: To navigate the menu, configure the button to jump to slide or show hidden content. This allows users to move to specific sections of the course. 

#3: Use Multi-state objects to change the appearance of a choice: changing color or adding a check mark. 

#4: Use Stack card widget or Slider widget.  

     With a Stack card widget, learners can click on or tap on layered cards progressing from one card to another. This could be useful for step-by-step instructions and/or scenario-based learning for example.   

     With a Slider widget, there are many uses. For the purposes of our discussion here, I would like to highlight that it is particularly useful in reflection activities that ask the learner to consider his or her learning journey.  

    I hope this blog sparked your desire to think of more than one modality in teaching and/or training individuals. Regardless of which educational environment you work in, there are many opportunities to find creative solutions to help people build their knowledge and skills. This will help your learners flourish. 

      This blog post was created by Irina Zak, who has over 20 years of education experience working with both children and adults. It is her belief that all learners can blossom with the right tools.