Active Learning

[xerprofrn]

Great response and information. Has anyone tried it in their class and how would you grade it or do you grade it? What if a student does not do the reading?

First, I have no idea what discipline you teach in, so you have to define "reading" for me.  Do you give them entire chapters of a textbook, half of which has no relevance to your course outcomes?  Or do you focus their reading with topics in the book?  Do you give them an article to read?  Have you considered videos to watch, instead of reading (depending on your discipline)? 

You have to incentivize class prep in some way.  My experience has been that students don't do anything that isn't incentivized, even a very small one.  Create questions directly from the reading for them to answer.  My rules are that the answers have to be handwritten and submitted by the start of class on our LMS.  It's graded completed/not completed.

For another class in which my discipline's peer-reviewed articles are appraised, I ask them to submit substantive questions about a pre-selected article that they would like to explore further.  They discuss one of those questions in small groups and submit a 5-7 sentence summary of their question and answer in a 15-minute activity. Prep and the summary are completed/not completed.  There's more to the whole activity, but this is just an example of encouraging prep and in-class application.

By the way, I also impose penalties for being off-task, e.g. using their phones during the allotted time.  I don't back off on that either when I put in the points for the activity.  It may seem draconian, but students have issues seeing in-class activities as being relevant to their learning when it actually is their learning.

[phattangent]

I love this article.  I found a similar article a few months ago that tested essentially the same thing--students felt less inclined toward active learning due to the cognitive effort required in doing so, although their assessments showed better performance. 

I like how the authors carried out an additional semester-long intervention to see if students' FOL could be positively impacted by better motivating active learning at the beginning of the semester. Specifically, the instructor of this course introduced the concept of active learning to the students as well as the negative correlation reported by the authors' study. At the end of the semester, nearly two-thirds of students reported that their feelings about active learning improved over the course of the semester.

[HigherEd7]

Great response. I was going to give each member of the group a certain number of pages to read from the chapter, article, and listen to a few minutes of a video and then share it with their classmates. At the end of the week, I am going to set up a journal and ask for their feedback on the assignment and who was not prepared. Thoughts?

Great response and information. Has anyone tried it in their class and how would you grade it or do you grade it? What if a student does not do the reading?

First, I have no idea what discipline you teach in, so you have to define "reading" for me.  Do you give them entire chapters of a textbook, half of which has no relevance to your course outcomes?  Or do you focus their reading with topics in the book?  Do you give them an article to read?  Have you considered videos to watch, instead of reading (depending on your discipline)? 

You have to incentivize class prep in some way.  My experience has been that students don't do anything that isn't incentivized, even a very small one.  Create questions directly from the reading for them to answer.  My rules are that the answers have to be handwritten and submitted by the start of class on our LMS.  It's graded completed/not completed.

For another class in which my discipline's peer-reviewed articles are appraised, I ask them to submit substantive questions about a pre-selected article that they would like to explore further.  They discuss one of those questions in small groups and submit a 5-7 sentence summary of their question and answer in a 15-minute activity. Prep and the summary are completed/not completed.  There's more to the whole activity, but this is just an example of encouraging prep and in-class application.

By the way, I also impose penalties for being off-task, e.g. using their phones during the allotted time.  I don't back off on that either when I put in the points for the activity.  It may seem draconian, but students have issues seeing in-class activities as being relevant to their learning when it actually is their learning.

[spork]

If it doesn't count toward the final grade, students won't do it.

[Caracal]

Great response. I was going to give each member of the group a certain number of pages to read from the chapter, article, and listen to a few minutes of a video and then share it with their classmates. At the end of the week, I am going to set up a journal and ask for their feedback on the assignment and who was not prepared. Thoughts?

The thing you have to remember with all of this, if you're new to teaching, is that anything you do needs to be both geared to the students you teach, and your own strengths. Just because something works well for someone else doesn't mean it will work well for you. To take an example, I know lots of people who have students prepare and lead discussions. I can see how it could be effective, but I don't do it. The problem is that:
1. I teach somewhere where trying to get students to work together outside of class can be challenging and
2. Organization isn't a strength of mine. I can get my part of the course organized, but if I add in communicating with students, dealing with them forgetting, or not coming etc, etc. I'm going to end up throwing a lot of plates in the air that I will drop when things get busy.

So, sure, try stuff out if it seems workable, but be ready to change course if it turns out something isn't going to work.

[rxprof]

I agree that students will not do the work unless there is an incentive. I use team-based learning with a class of 80-90 students. They complete reading with very clear learning objective before each class session. The first 10 minutes of class is an individual readiness assessment team (IRAT), followed by 10 minutes for their team to complete the team readiness assessment test (TRAT, same questions as the individual assessment). They use scratch off IF-AT cards to receive immediate feedback on their performance. The remainder of the class session is cases with 4-5 multiple choice answer so that they apply the information and receive feedback. For example, I instruct them to spend 5 minutes working on case 1. Their team agrees on an answers. I then instruct all of the teams to simultaneously post their answers. The key to the cases is that they need to have multiple reasonable answers so that it provokes discussion in the small groups and across the entire class. I then ask groups to explain why they did, or did not, select each answer. After the class discussion, I summarize key points. And then we repeat this process for the remainder of the cases. The teams also completed a written (graded) submission for one case during each class session.

Several aspects of the course structure promote accountability of individual students:
- IRAT counts towards their grade
- In addition to passing the course, they must pass the exams (which are taken individually) with at least a 70%. This is ensure that they are not passing only because of their team performance.
- There is a midpoint and final peer evaluation process that is taken very seriously. Students who are not good team members are at risk of having their course grade lowered (e.g., student could be on track to earn an A in the course, but because the team provides evidence that they are not meeting expectations, they actually earn a grade of a B in the course). The midpoint evaluation is formative and does not impact their course grade. Administration is supportive of these policies.

I love teaching using team-based learning! However, my experience is that it is significantly more work than lecturing. I also work at an institution that encourages active learning (e.g., most other faculty use active learning strategies) and I have very engaged students.

[polly_mer]

I love teaching using team-based learning! However, my experience is that it is significantly more work than lecturing. I also work at an institution that encourages active learning (e.g., most other faculty use active learning strategies) and I have very engaged students.

When I changed institutions from a regional comprehensive that had a lot of active learning to Super Dinky that had almost none, I noticed immediately how much harder getting students to participate in their own education was.  The demographics were similar in terms of preparation, but those students at Super Dinky really were not on board with doing any sort of pre-class prep.

I was then amazed at how much easier teaching was for me when I converted to lecture-with-discussion for some of those classes.  The students who refused to participate still failed, but the prep and delivery was far less work for me.

[HigherEd7]

What type of active learning strategies did you do?

I love teaching using team-based learning! However, my experience is that it is significantly more work than lecturing. I also work at an institution that encourages active learning (e.g., most other faculty use active learning strategies) and I have very engaged students.

When I changed institutions from a regional comprehensive that had a lot of active learning to Super Dinky that had almost none, I noticed immediately how much harder getting students to participate in their own education was.  The demographics were similar in terms of preparation, but those students at Super Dinky really were not on board with doing any sort of pre-class prep.

I was then amazed at how much easier teaching was for me when I converted to lecture-with-discussion for some of those classes.  The students who refused to participate still failed, but the prep and delivery was far less work for me.