In this post, let's know more about the other remaining activities scaffolded by the Activity Planner.

1. Introducing New Ideas
   This planner contains different types of activities to accompany the introduction of new ideas such as n a lecture or talk.  The activities can be for before, during, or after the presentation of new ideas, or a combination such as both before and during a lecture.  This strategy emphasizes the rationale that helping students to articulate their existing ideas will enhance their subsequent engagement with the lecture/talk.
   
   
   
   Below are the types of activities that can be used to introduce new ideas:
   
   
   • Identifying Misconceptions. These activities ask students to articulate their existing views of an idea, with a focus on trying to elicit misconceptions or misunderstandings.
     
   • Reviewing a Key Resource.  These activities ask students to review a key resource on the new idea such as an article, website or other resource. The focus is on building prior knowledge of the idea before the lecture/talk.
     
   • Personal Reflection.  These activities encourage students to reflect privately on their existing views and ideas, without seeing the ideas of other students or sharing their own views with others.
     
   • Relating to Contemporary Events.  These activities focus on contemporary events that illustrate the new idea.
     
   • Responding to a Provocative Idea.  These activities challenge students with a provocative idea, and ask them to articulate their own views in response.
     
   • Seeing Two Sides.  These activities present two different view of an idea, often opposing view, and ask students to respond to both sides, often by realizing they agree, at least in part, with both views.
     
   • Finding a Hidden Bias.  These activities present a resource about the idea that contains a hidden bias, and asks students to identify and explain this bias.
     
   • Explaining a Striking Statistic.  These activities present surprising or striking statistic and asks students to propose ideas to explain this statistic.
     
   • Brainstorming Ideas.  These activities ask students to brainstorm different ideas in response to a key question.
     
   • Collecting Data.  These activities require students to collect some sort of data so that the teacher can illustrate the new idea using the collated student data.
     
     
2. Topic-based activities
   This provides activities for particular disciplines or topic areas such as Introductory Psychology. 
   
   
   
   Below are some of the typical topics covered in Introductory Psychology;
   
   
   • Introduction and History of Psychology.  Introductory activities and history of psychology activities.
     
   • Research Methods and Statistics.  Activities about the research methods used in Psychology, including the use of statistics.
     
   • The Brain and Nervous System.  Activities about the function of the brain and nervous system.
     
   • Sensation and Perception.  Activities about how we experience sensations from the world around us.
     
   • Learning and Behavior.  Activities about behaviour and how learning takes place.
     
   • Developmental Psychology.  Activities about different types of development (physical, cognitive, emotional) and their stages.
     
   • Intelligence and Individual Differences.  Activities for exploring intelligence and individual differences.
     
   • Social Psychology.  Activities about social interactions of individuals and groups.
     
   • Personality.  Activities exploring human personality and differences.

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LAMS 2.3 has a lot of new features in its latest release.  One of these is the Activity Planner:  an alternative way to create educationally solid learning designs.

The LAMS Activity Planner is designed to produce runnable learning activities that can be readily used with students.  It guides authors or teachers through the design process to enable them to add their own content to educationally sound learning activities.  Existing learning designs, resources, and learning objects can be reused, thus, assisting teachers and lecturers in the process without requiring them to become experts in learning design or theory. 

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Time Graphs and Charts are among the newest features included in LAMS version 2.3.  Surely, authors/teachers as well as the learners/students will have their share of advantages from these.

In the Monitoring Environment, the graphs show how quickly learners move through the activities in a sequence.  If you're an author or a teacher, you can quickly troubleshoot areas where your students spend a lot of time on particular activities.  You can also easily identify students and learners who are moving at a slower pace than the rest of the class.   The graphs show "live" information as the learners move through the activities in sequence. 

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