Learning through simulators is a form of active learning that allows students to implement learning they have already acquired and to test their own hypotheses. Through their simulations they can see the consequences of their choices and discuss them.

This type of tool can therefore be used at the end of a teaching sequence to enable students to apply knowledge during a class.

A Bar Camp is an open "non-conference" that takes the form of participatory workshops-events where the content is provided by the participants who must all, in one capacity or another, bring something to the Barcamp, the objective is above all to share ideas.

Presentations by learners of several topics around a central theme to small groups of learners.

For a course for advanced master students on disease resistance breeding in crop plants we suggested a number of topics and shared the topics among the participating students. Each teacher took over to mentor one student who then had to provide: 1) a 30 minutes lecture to all attendees and 2) a 3-5 pages mini paper for scharing among all participants.

A Mind map is a visual representation of related and hierarchical ideas in map form. It can be offered at the end of a course, training module, etc. Learners identify and organize the knowledge taught upstream. It is necessary to have a session before and then after, rather than during the exercise.

Application of the BarCamp concept with prior preparation by learners in a pedagogical approach.

It is a question of diverting a board game to learn in a more playful way, here, around the traditional game of the goose.

The principle of the game is as follows: a board game with pawns and a die, presenting, between the Start box and the Finish box, a spiral box with in each of them a question related to a theme or field covered during the training. The first one to reach the Finish square wins.

"Jigsaw classroom" is a teaching technique invented in 1971 by the American social psychologist Elliot Aronson.

It uses a cooperative learning strategy that strongly encourages students to listen, engage, interact, share and thus gives everyone a key role to play in the academic activity.

Introducing your courses, training or subject matter is important even though it may sometimes seem unnecessary. The idea is to allow the learners to grasp the usefulness of these sessions that he will follow and to explain to them how the sessions will take place. This motivates the learners and improves their posture in front of the courses that will follow.

Students are assigned research/review articles that match the content of specific course sessions. They are entitled to present their article, identify strong and weak points, propose future perpectives and place it in the scientific context of the course and current knowledge. Students attending the course are invited to discuss the paper and provide arguments in favour or against.

Board games are a form of active learning that allows students to apply learning acquired elsewhere and thus to better anchor the knowledge acquired. It is learning by doing.

The aim is also to share ideas and open up questions that can be explored further. This type of tool can therefore be used within a teaching sequence in order to structure the knowledge acquired and to introduce new concepts that will be explored in greater depth later on.

Putting into practice the knowledge acquired through a board game.

We develop a MOOC called MOOC Nectar. The MOOC is a massive open online course and everybody can follow this course of 5 weeks on arthropod biodiversity in crops.

The idea was to use the resource developed within this MOOC for pedagogical issues for students of Master 1. The students acquire basic knowledge through the MOOC (2-3 hours a week) where they learn alone following the videos and applying for the exercises. In addition, the students manage the MOOC especially the forum and the facebook live (once a week). Finally to apply the knowledge acquired, they are hosted during four weeks in the lab UMR CBGP (https://www6.montpellier.inra.fr/cbgp) where they have to manage a small scietnific projets managed by the researchers. The topic concern taxonomy, biodiversity, biological control etc ...

They can make molecular biology, morphological analyses, data management etc ..

Online seminars with key researchers in their field.

The covid-19 problem lead to the cancellation of most seminars with physical presence. However we continued with online seminars using for instance zoom.

We invited several presenters for scientific seminars who are among the most cited and most acknowledged researchers in their field or chief editors of relevant journals. This allowed us as teachers and students to listen and speak  to very interesting colleagues sometimes from far away in an interactive manner.

Want to develop practical skills with your learners?

To initiate in them the spirit of a project developer?

Is autonomy in your work a central value for you to transmit to them?

Test the pedagogy by project and you will no longer have to doubt the interest of your courses.

We currently use Project-based Learning within a course entitled “Designing New Crops for the Future”, open to Montpellier SupAgro Master 1 students and Erasmus students. 

The project includes some scientific knowledge that the student needs to understand, learn, assimilate and reuse. Moreover, it  includes a specific problem to be solved through a careful planning and project execution. Personal and group guidance is applied to solve any challenge arising during the project.

This method is a methodological strategy of teaching and learning in which students carry out a real project applying the skills and knowledge acquired during the formative process.

Therefore, students simulate a real solicitation by completing the information required in notifications concerning releases of genetically modified higher plants (gymnospermae and angiospermae), which includes information relating to recipient or parental plants, the genetic modification, the genetically modified plant, etc.

Historically, the practice of debate is linked, on the Greek agora, to the emergence of democracy. Later, the philosophy of the Enlightenment established a close link between the birth of the modern democratic state and the existence of a public space ensuring the right of expression and confrontation of opinions.

"Knowing how to debate" is a key skill in civic education, a way for learners to experience, in a situation and in the institution, a public and responsible speech. Debating implies a communication ethic without which one falls into physical violence or verbal abuse: debating is civilising.

The debate tool is used, after an activity of reading articles or resulting from group work, to memorise new information and link it to one's own knowledge. The debate then serves as a confrontation of the knowledge and representations of everyone, including those of the teacher.

Postcards have existed in France since 1870. They have made it possible to send memories, communications and feelings all over the world. The idea is to use postcards as an educational tool.

With this trick, you allow the students to answer a thematic, personal or professional question that they will receive a few months after the training.

A person's attention inevitably drops after 20 minutes. During an intervention that lasts more than 20 minutes, the objective is, through an animation (video, story, poll...), to break the rhythm of the session in order to regain the audience's attention.

Flipped classroom learning allows a group of students of different levels to acquire basic knowledge at a different and more appropriate pace. It also allows for reminders to be given or made available. It then requires face-to-face sessions to restructure the knowledge acquired.

Following a course already given, some key points can be identified as barriers to understanding and learning. The aim of the progressive method is to return to these points during a TD by proposing one or more activities to the learners.

The activity is done initially in pairs then in small groups then possibly in larger groups.

It is a dynamic group work where different workshops are proposed. It mobilizes the qualities of expression (oral and written) and creativity of the participants.

The icebreaker is a method of waking up an audience, stimulating them and encouraging them to speak out. It is very simple to set up and requires very little upstream preparation.

When creating a new working group, it is often difficult to find the time to get to know each other. Especially when hierarchical positions are poorly established, or when strong cultural differences exist within the group. Communication problems can then arise.

That's when you have to break the ice.