Practice activities help learners strengthen and refine skills, knowledge and attitudes by applying them and receiving feedback. They give learners an opportunity to exercise newly acquired abilities. Practice activities are divided into three: Drill-and-practice activities, hands-on activities and guided-analysis activities. A drill-and-practice activity starts with an introduction that welcomes learners and explains how the activity works. Hands-on learning activities give learners a small piece of real work to perform. Guided-analysis activities step learners through the process of analyzing a complex situation.
Discovery activities don't present ideas but lead learners to discover ideas on their own. They transform trial-and-error into trail-and-aha learning. Discovery learning is an alternative to presentation-based teaching. Discovery activities guide learners in conducting experiments and analyzing situations so that learners can observe and record their finding. Types of discovery activities are virtual laboratories and case studies. A virtual laboratory provides an on-screen simulator or calculator that learners can use to test ideas or observe results. Case studies teach abstract, general principles from specific, concrete particulars. They are good for teaching complex knowledge that can't be reduced to a simple formula.
Games and simulations turn learning into meaningful, productive play. Games serve two purposes: to provide practice of a skill or to provoke discovery of knowledge. To learn from the game, learners must first learn to play the game and in order to minimize the time wasted in learning to play the game, the game must be based on a few simple rules, a familiar model should be used and the same type game should be used through the game.
