Active Learning

Our pur­pose in teach­ing is to cre­ate a sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty for learn­ing and agency in stu­dents that leads to stu­dents’ self-con­fi­dence and the abil­i­ty for life-long learn­ing in their cho­sen field and beyond. We do this through effec­tive design and imple­men­ta­tion of cours­es by active­ly engag­ing stu­dents in the think­ing of our dis­ci­plines, whether online and at a dis­tance, in a blend­ed for­mat, or in ful­ly face-to-face cours­es.

Engage Students in the Classroom: Active Learning

“Active learn­ing” describes a broad cat­e­go­ry of prac­tices that place stu­dents at the cen­ter of class­room activ­i­ties. Stu­dents learn best when they are doing some­thing that requires an invest­ment and a com­mit­ment of par­tic­i­pa­tion, rather than lis­ten­ing to a lec­ture or watch­ing a video. Being active often means inter­act­ing with oth­er learn­ers. Coop­er­a­tive, Col­lab­o­ra­tive and Team-Based Learn­ing are some exam­ples of strate­gies used for Active Learn­ing.

To cre­ate this kind of class­room envi­ron­ment requires some plan­ning. For one, the instruc­tor has to com­mu­ni­cate con­sis­tent­ly clear expec­ta­tions that the class­room will not mere­ly be used sim­ply for the instruc­tor’s lec­ture, but will be the place where stu­dents demon­strate their learn­ing through their own actions. To be suc­cess­ful as a strat­e­gy, this needs to start on Day One, and con­tin­ue through­out the course. Sec­ond, if stu­dents are to devel­op the con­fi­dence they need to be chal­lenged in this way, they will need to come pre­pared. The instruc­tor will there­fore need to use strate­gies and tech­niques to ensure that stu­dents do the prepara­to­ry work nec­es­sary for their suc­cess. Third, the eval­u­a­tion of stu­dent learn­ing will need to be tied to stu­dents’ demon­strat­ed skill in apply­ing course con­tent in new sit­u­a­tions, rather than in mere mem­o­riza­tion and accu­rate recall of infor­ma­tion record­ed from lec­ture and read­ings. Most stu­dents will pur­sue what counts toward their marks, and dis­count what does not.

Gold­en rules for cre­at­ing an active learn­ing class­room

The in-class learn­ing activ­i­ties need struc­ture but should not be canned steps. Stu­dents need to act for them­selves in using their new knowl­edge. Ask­ing stu­dents to make judg­ments and deci­sions is an effec­tive way to exer­cise the free­dom of self-deter­mi­na­tion, but with­in a con­text that you have struc­tured to be rel­e­vant.

The in-class activ­i­ties can and should include a vari­ety of for­mats: prob­lem-solv­ing, analy­ses and diag­noses based on sit­u­a­tions or data sets, quizzes, and “let’s see what you can do” chal­lenges. These learn­ing activ­i­ties force stu­dents to retrieve, apply, and/or extend the mate­r­i­al learned out­side of class.

Con­sis­tent instruc­tor expec­ta­tions for stu­dent pre­pared­ness are essen­tial to make class meet­ings pro­duc­tive and engag­ing for stu­dents. Stu­dents need to demon­strate their pre­pared­ness on a reg­u­lar basis, in the form of online tasks due before class, read­ing quizzes (online or at the begin­ning of class), or oth­er assess­ment activ­i­ties.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of a student’s mark for the course needs to be tied to class­room activ­i­ties relat­ed to apply­ing and using course con­tent.

Cre­at­ing Dia­logue in the Class­room

Dr. Stephen Rad­er, (Chem­istry) and Dr. Tra­cy Sum­merville (Polit­i­cal Sci­ence), UNBC
Reprint­ed with per­mis­sion by William J. Owen, Edi­tor, 2010 UNBC Teach­ing Man­u­al

One of the most impor­tant goals – and great­est chal­lenges – of edu­ca­tors is to cre­ate a learn­ing envi­ron­ment in which the stu­dents par­tic­i­pate active­ly in their edu­ca­tion by becom­ing engaged with the course mate­r­i­al. An effec­tive way to pro­mote active par­tic­i­pa­tion is through dia­logue in the class­room. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, many stu­dents, trained by years of pas­sive edu­ca­tion and cowed by the fear of mak­ing mis­takes, are extreme­ly reluc­tant to enter into dia­logue in the class­room. So, how do you get stu­dents to begin to active­ly engage in sub­stan­tive dia­logue? We argue that the essen­tial pre-req­ui­site for class­room dia­logue is an atmos­phere of trust.

Types of Dia­logue

Ques­tion and Answer (Q and A)

Q and A ses­sions are undoubt­ed­ly the most com­mon way in which we expect to cre­ate dia­logue in the class­room. Instruc­tors can invite stu­dents to ask ques­tions at any time dur­ing the lec­ture or set aside a spe­cif­ic time for ques­tions. The choice to allow stu­dents to inter­rupt dur­ing lec­tures, how­ev­er, will help in build­ing an active learn­ing envi­ron­ment because stu­dents can engage with the instruc­tor through­out the lec­ture. It is also impor­tant to remem­ber that the instruc­tor can ask ques­tions of the stu­dents too.

Think / Pair / Share

Think / pair / share is a tech­nique that allows stu­dents to inter­act with a peer to work out a prob­lem or ques­tion that the instruc­tor has assigned. Stu­dents are asked to work with a part­ner in order that the stu­dents can active­ly work through prob­lems. Think / pair / share works in large class­room set­tings because stu­dents can sim­ply turn to their neigh­bour to begin this exer­cise. How­ev­er, large class­es also have their draw­backs because it is often dif­fi­cult to ensure that stu­dents are actu­al­ly dis­cussing the prob­lem and not last night‘s par­ty.

Small Group Dis­cus­sions

Small group dis­cus­sions also work to cre­ate inter­ac­tion between peers. Again, this may be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get stu­dents to work through a sin­gle prob­lem or for the instruc­tor to design dif­fer­ent prob­lems for each group. The instruc­tor may have each group share their find­ings with the whole class at the end of the dis­cus­sion.

Infor­mal Debates

Infor­mal debates may begin in a class­room quite unex­pect­ed­ly. They should be encour­aged and the instruc­tor should take the time to dis­cuss the debate, out­lin­ing the dif­fer­ent posi­tions includ­ing flaws in rea­son­ing, incor­rect assump­tions or facts. Make sure the stu­dents under­stand that free flow­ing debate is not tan­gen­tial to lec­ture mate­r­i­al. Some stu­dents assume that the only ―voice that mat­ters is that of the instruc­tor. Take the time to point out how stu­dents may have used ideas / con­cepts from the course to argue a point.

For­mal Debates

For­mal debates are a good tool to get stu­dents engaged in both care­ful research and pre­sen­ta­tion tech­niques. The com­pet­i­tive nature of debate can often spark stu­dent inter­est. The instruc­tor needs to set out the debate rules, to expect that research is done before­hand prefer­ably demon­strat­ed through an assign­ment giv­en to the instruc­tor before the debate. One tech­nique for ensur­ing that stu­dents take the debate seri­ous­ly is to ask that stu­dents dress appro­pri­ate­ly on debate day.

Pre­sen­ta­tions

Indi­vid­ual and group pre­sen­ta­tions are good tools to teach the impor­tant skill of oral com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For some stu­dents pre­sen­ta­tions are a joy; for oth­ers pre­sen­ta­tions are wrought with anx­i­ety and fear. There are two vital parts of a pre­sen­ta­tion, first there must be clear, well researched con­tent and sec­ond, they must be orga­nized and clear. It is impor­tant to help stu­dents under­stand that pre­sen­ta­tions can­not be all ―bells and whis­tles‖ with­out sub­stance. Instruc­tors may want to ask the stu­dents to design the grad­ing rubric for the pre­sen­ta­tions. Stu­dents are like­ly to put the empha­sis on the con­tent when they are asked ―what makes a good pre­sen­ta­tion‖. A pre­sen­ta­tion may have lots of bells of whis­tles but if the con­tent is lost or unclear the audi­ence will feel that they have not learned any­thing.

Oral exam­i­na­tions

Oral exam­i­na­tions can be a very effec­tive way of deter­min­ing whether or not the stu­dents can artic­u­late ideas they have learned in the course. It becomes very clear that a stu­dent has done the course read­ings when you are hav­ing a one-on-one dis­cus­sion with them about the course. When the exam is designed as an open end­ed inter­view ses­sion with a num­ber of crit­i­cal ques­tions along the way, the instruc­tor can often gauge what aspects of the course had the most impact on the stu­dent. Two notes of cau­tion: first, it is nec­es­sary to have a grad­ing rubric tem­plate that is com­plet­ed at the end of each exam oth­er­wise it is very dif­fi­cult to remem­ber indi­vid­ual stu­dent respons­es; sec­ond, it is nec­es­sary to mix up the ques­tions so that stu­dents do not share the exam ques­tions. This also means that the instruc­tor has to be very clear about what the stu­dents should be get­ting out of the course (i.e. what is exam­inable) so that there is no basis for stu­dents to say that they got ―hard ques­tions where­as oth­ers got ―easy ones.

Edward Zlotkows­ki. “Ped­a­gogy and Engage­ment.” in Robert G. Bringle, Richard Games and Rev­erend Edward A. Mal­loy eds. Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties as Cit­i­zens .Need­ham Hei­ths, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1999:99–100.

Reliable Formats of Engagement for the Active Learning Classroom

The Active Learn­ing Class­room is dri­ven by stu­dents doing their own think­ing in sit­u­a­tions you have designed, so you (the res­i­dent expert) can respond and offer feed­back. For many fac­ul­ty mem­bers, the hard­est chal­lenge is to design the kind of activ­i­ty that 1) is engag­ing and inher­ent­ly inter­est­ing and 2) demon­strates the tar­get­ed think­ing, so it becomes vis­i­ble to the fac­ul­ty mem­ber (and to the stu­dents, them­selves).

One effec­tive strat­e­gy for cre­at­ing intrin­si­cal­ly inter­est­ing tasks is to require stu­dents to make autonomous choic­es and deci­sions with­in a restrict­ed frame­work, rather than gen­er­ate free respons­es to open-end­ed ques­tions. This is the same tech­nique used by game design­ers to make game sce­nar­ios so excit­ing and engag­ing. Restrict­ed autonomous deci­sions empha­size the student’s clear com­mit­ment to a way of think­ing, which impli­cates him/her more direct­ly in the chal­lenge. This in turn caus­es the feed­back to be inter­est­ing, even if the stu­dent is work­ing with­in a top­ic where he/she has no real inter­est. By mak­ing his own, clear choice, the stu­dent has now invest­ed in the chal­lenge, which makes the out­come rel­e­vant at a per­son­al lev­el. Now the stu­dent is moti­vat­ed to learn whether his/her deci­sion is sound, which makes the dis­cus­sion about the deci­sion par­tic­u­lar­ly engag­ing.

Tasks that are open-for­mat (make a list; brain­storm rea­sons; gen­er­ate a solu­tion; “dis­cuss;” etc.) all have their place at times, but they can also lead to lazy think­ing if you are try­ing to pro­mote focused, ana­lyt­i­cal dis­cus­sions in class. For one, the respons­es to an open-for­mat ques­tion can be so far afield as to not be high­ly use­ful in a gen­er­al debrief of stu­dent think­ing. Sec­ond, open-for­mat tasks tend to allow cer­tain kinds of stu­dents to dom­i­nate the con­ver­sa­tion, because they are less timid to gen­er­ate and share their per­spec­tive, even if it is not par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. Also, it’s too easy for less con­fi­dent, less assertive or less quick-think­ing stu­dents to defer to the “best” student’s answer. Closed-for­mat ques­tions tend to lev­el the play­ing field, as slow­er stu­dents are usu­al­ly quick­er to choose than to gen­er­ate an answer.

Debrief­ing

The ben­e­fit of these restric­tive for­mat tasks is that an instructor’s fol­low-up ques­tion to stu­dents, “WHY?” is now clear­ly focused and deeply ana­lyt­i­cal. “Why did you score this para­graph a 7 and not a 3?” Why did you choose that rock, and not the oth­ers? Why did you put this object in that cat­e­go­ry, rather than this oth­er cat­e­go­ry? “Why” when it fol­lows a student’s own, autonomous deci­sion impli­cates s the stu­dent direct­ly, mak­ing the answer some­thing that mat­ters, because it is per­son­al and imme­di­ate to his own think­ing.

Inquiry Based Learning

Inquiry Based Learn­ing places the respon­si­bil­i­ty for learn­ing on the stu­dents, and encour­ages them to arrive at an under­stand­ing of con­cepts by them­selves

Some Inquiry-inten­sive prac­tices include:

Design Think­ing

Design Think­ing sup­ports and struc­tures the cre­ative process of gen­er­at­ing ideas and bring­ing them into real­i­ty through con­crete actions and prod­ucts. Com­mon­ly used to frame stu­dent work in art, but adapt­able to many oth­er dis­ci­plines, Design Think­ing guides stu­dents through five phas­es of think­ing and activ­i­ty: Dis­cov­ery, Inter­pre­ta­tion, Ideation, Exper­i­men­ta­tion, and Evo­lu­tion.

Prob­lem-Based Learn­ing

Prob­lem-Based Learn­ing con­fronts stu­dents with messy, com­plex prob­lems encoun­tered in the real world as a stim­u­lus for learn­ing. Prob­lems are raised with stu­dents before have been taught the rel­e­vant knowl­edge. By active­ly engag­ing with the prob­lem first, learn­ers devel­op skills around defin­ing prob­lems, iden­ti­fy­ing what infor­ma­tion they need, and find­ing, eval­u­at­ing and using infor­ma­tion. Learn­ers are able to con­nect their thought process­es in class to solv­ing prob­lems in the real world.

Case or Sce­nario-Based Learn­ing

Case or Sce­nario-Based Learn­ing engages stu­dents in analy­sis of spe­cif­ic sce­nar­ios that resem­ble or are real-world exam­ples. This method is learn­er-cen­tered with intense inter­ac­tion between par­tic­i­pants as they build their knowl­edge and work togeth­er as a group to exam­ine the case. The instruc­tor’s role is that of a facil­i­ta­tor while the stu­dents col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly ana­lyze and address prob­lems and resolve ques­tions that have no sin­gle right answer.

Meta-ques­tions

Meta-ques­tions are fram­ing ques­tions designed to struc­ture stu­dent work dur­ing a whole term with­in an envelop­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. Activ­i­ties are devel­oped and resources are cho­sen for sup­port­ing stu­dents’ con­sid­er­a­tion of this Big Ques­tion. Dai­ly dis­cus­sions and var­i­ous assign­ments repeat­ed­ly return to the fram­ing inquiry, and at the end of the term stu­dents are asked to pro­duce a com­pre­hen­sive response to the Meta-ques­tion.

Inquiry can also be embed­ded in oth­er learn­ing frame­works, such as:

• Under­grad­u­ate Research
• Thresh­old con­cepts
• Pub­lic Sphere Ped­a­gogy
• Engaged Learn­ing (e.g., civic engage­ment)
• Field work
• Pro­gres­sive Inquiry
• Project-based learn­ing

Group Work

Coop­er­a­tive and Col­lab­o­ra­tive Learn­ing
These two terms are often used inter­change­ably, but it’s use­ful to main­tain some dis­tinc­tion. Each approach lever­ages the social dimen­sion of learn­ing in a slight­ly dif­fer­ent way.

Coop­er­a­tive learn­ing focus­es on ask­ing stu­dents to inter­act in high­ly struc­tured ways to process ideas and infor­ma­tion, or prac­tice skills. “Think-Pair-Share” is a clas­sic exam­ple of a coop­er­a­tive learn­ing tech­nique in that it asks stu­dents to coop­er­ate tem­porar­i­ly for a spe­cif­ic learn­ing pur­pose. In coop­er­a­tive learn­ing the inter­ac­tion with peers does not nor­mal­ly fac­tor into the eval­u­a­tion of the stu­den­t’s indi­vid­ual per­for­mance. The lim­it­ed scope of coop­er­a­tive work in the class­room means that it can be incor­po­rat­ed fair­ly eas­i­ly into just about any course for­mat or con­tent.

Some Com­mon Exam­ples of Coop­er­a­tive Learn­ing include:

• Think/Pair/Share
• Coop­er­a­tive note-tak­ing
• Struc­tured con­tro­ver­sies
• Debates
• Jig­saws

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Learn­ing, on the oth­er hand, asks stu­dents to work col­lec­tive­ly to pro­duce some­thing for which group mem­bers share respon­si­bil­i­ty. For plan­ning pur­pos­es, there­fore, col­lab­o­ra­tive learn­ing is more con­se­quen­tial for deci­sions made at the lev­el of cur­ricu­lum, course design, and eval­u­a­tion of learn­ing. Of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance, the col­lab­o­ra­tive approach needs to give stu­dents some flex­i­bil­i­ty and free­dom of action, so that groups are able to accom­mo­date the par­tic­u­lar needs of group mem­bers as they learn to work as a unit.

Impor­tant to keep in mind are the logis­ti­cal and time bur­dens put on stu­dents by col­lab­o­ra­tive projects that are designed to take place out­side of class. Coor­di­nat­ing busy sched­ules and track­ing down stu­dent peers takes enor­mous ener­gy that is not direct­ly rel­e­vant to the learn­ing goals of a project. Ensure that stu­dents are giv­en some time in class to orga­nize them­selves and to touch base at key moments in the course of prepar­ing out-of-class projects.

Team-Based Learning

Team based learn­ing (TBL) is a com­pre­hen­sive instruc­tion­al method, invent­ed by orga­ni­za­tion­al behav­ior pro­fes­sor Lar­ry K. Michaelsen, which puts stu­dents into roles of greater auton­o­my and respon­si­bil­i­ty for acquir­ing and using infor­ma­tion. Some crit­i­cal com­po­nents of TBL are:

1. Teams that are per­ma­nent
2. A process to ensure indi­vid­ual stu­dent readi­ness for group work
3. Assign­ments that require stu­dents to work col­lec­tive­ly on rig­or­ous appli­ca­tion of course con­tent, and
4. Peer eval­u­a­tion. A cen­tral strat­e­gy of TBL is to shift the use of class time away from instruc­tors trans­mit­ting con­cepts in class (which can be accom­plished more effi­cient­ly, indi­vid­u­al­ly, out­side of class), and towards stu­dents work­ing in teams to apply course con­cepts. The team struc­ture is an essen­tial con­di­tion for requir­ing stu­dents to per­form at high­er cog­ni­tive lev­els.

Lots of peo­ple use groups. What’s so spe­cial about a “team”?

Groups are col­lec­tions of indi­vid­u­als who might or might not coop­er­ate. Teams are groups with a shared pur­pose and sense of col­lec­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty. Groups evolve into teams when con­di­tions are right. Mem­bers start out as indi­vid­u­als who may or may not func­tion well togeth­er, due to hitch­hik­ing mem­bers, dom­i­nant per­son­al­i­ties, and poor­ly designed assign­ments. Well-designed tasks plus strate­gic course design teach group mem­bers to lis­ten to one anoth­er, val­ue each oth­er’s con­tri­bu­tions, learn from mis­takes, rein in inef­fec­tive behav­ior, and even­tu­al­ly trust in the team’s abil­i­ty to out­per­form any giv­en indi­vid­ual.

What are the prin­ci­ples behind TBL?

TBL emerged out of research in orga­ni­za­tion­al and cog­ni­tive psy­chol­o­gy. Among the prin­ci­ples that dri­ve the method are the fol­low­ing:

• Stu­dents learn best and are more moti­vat­ed when feed­back is fre­quent and imme­di­ate.
• Work­ing in groups cre­ates oppor­tu­ni­ties for fre­quent, imme­di­ate feed­back and reflec­tion among peers.
• Groups need time togeth­er to learn to func­tion as a team, hence the use of per­ma­nent­ly assigned groups.
• Effec­tive­ly func­tion­ing groups need very lit­tle instruc­tor over­sight or man­age­ment. TBL is there­fore a more effi­cient use of an instructor’s time, and can be scaled to class­es of any size.

Flipped Learning

What is Flipped Learn­ing?

Stu­dents learn key con­cepts on their own—they read, view, and inter­act with care­ful­ly selected/created online mate­ri­als before class, and then apply their learn­ing dur­ing class time, in increas­ing­ly chal­leng­ing activ­i­ties. This process inverts the tra­di­tion­al ‘lec­ture trans­mis­sion’ mod­el, reserv­ing in-class time for small-group work that engages stu­dents in prob­lem solv­ing and apply­ing the knowl­edge they have acquired on their own. Many activ­i­ties can be part of a flipped class: debates, click­er ques­tions, demon­stra­tions, sim­u­la­tions, peer feed­back, and role play­ing. An instruc­tor may choose to flip just a few class­es a term, where the con­cepts lend them­selves to active learn­ing expe­ri­ences, or to flip the whole course.

Com­po­nents and Ben­e­fits

• Increas­es inter­ac­tion and per­son­al­ized con­tact between stu­dents and teach­ers. Stu­dents are more engaged in learn­ing

• Stu­dents can spend time pro­cess­ing mate­ri­als out­side of class – they are not tied to the time frame of an in-class lec­ture. Stu­dents take more respon­si­bil­i­ty for their own learn­ing.
• Flip­ping increas­es stu­dents’ focus on the most impor­tant and most dif­fi­cult con­cepts of the course.
• Fac­ul­ty can more eas­i­ly see where stu­dents are strug­gling and adjust the course to attend to the dif­fi­cul­ties stu­dents actu­al­ly have.
• Stu­dents who are absent due to ill­ness or extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ties, don’t get left out (con­tent can be per­ma­nent­ly archived for review or reme­di­a­tion)
• Flip­ping offers more vari­ety, more “hands-on” prob­lem-solv­ing than a tra­di­tion­al class