There are well-defined instructional techniques that make teaching more effective. These techniques can be introduced slowly and methodically, without compromising coverage of the syllabus.


What is Active Learning?

Active Learning means doing learning in a non-passive way. It also means getting students to be involved in some kind of learning activity as asking and answering questions and discussing lecture and course topics. Active Learning can happen in or out of the class.


Where to Start?

- Ask a colleague to come and attend one of your lectures. It can either be someone acquainted with your course subject or not. Prepare that specific lecture with your colleague (share your PowerPoint slides and / or lesson plan). Then, ask him / her to play a role. For example, at a specific timing, after you introduced a concept and want to check how many and how students are grabbing it, your colleague can ask a question (prepare the question in advance). Then, instead of providing the answer, ask your class: Who can give an answer to this question? Or, better even, ask a specific student to try and answer that question. You can always pick another student to continue with the answer and involve more students. This, of course, will depend on the question and on the level of the course. Do not take more than a couple of minutes with this activity and continue your lecture.

- Homework, required readings and assignments: tell your students that during the next class you will be asking questions concerning an assigned reading or homework. In such cases, it works better if you award a few points (grading) for this activity.

- Muddiest point: if you are following up on the last lecture topic and want to assess on how much the students have learned on it may be useful to start your class with the question (Paulson and Faust, http://www.calstatela.edu/dept/chem/chem2/Active/#share). What was the "muddiest point" (not clear) in last lecture?". This will tell you how much retention from previous lectures (or readings) students are achieving.

- Put students into pairs or groups of three and ask them to go over a specific lecture or course topic (questions / answers). Then invite a pair / group to put a question to their peers; allow time for response and engage in the discussion.

- Ask students, or small groups, to build up a problem related with the present lecture. Then, switch roles and ask another group to solve that problem. This is a good way to find out about students’ misconceptions of the course material.


Tips for Getting Started

- Try and learn a few of your students’ names: we all like to be remembered and acknowledged.

- If the room allows for it do not keep yourself up-front waiting for an answer to a question or for the final result to a given problem: walk up and down and engage in discussion with students while they work out the problem.

- Keep the Learning Pyramid on your working desk or, better even, stick it on a board in a way that you can not miss looking at it often.

- Once you fill comfortable with this pick-up one Active Learning technique that you find to be suitable for your course (muddiest point, share-pair, one-minute paper, etc.). Do not forget that you also need to feel comfortable in using it. Teachers as students have different characteristics or preferences!

- Be flexible and prepared to chose a different AL technique for the same learning objective or try the same technique with a different topic you need to cover. The systematic use of the same AL technique during the whole semester can be as boring, from the students’ point of view as a “spoon-fed” (just listen to the professor) class. The success of your lectures is dependent on diversity (Richard Felder), and a balanced blend of “listening”, “solving problems”, “learning activity” and “questions and answers

- Design, implement and evaluate! Try also to answer the following question: How much did I move from “teacher” to “student” centred learning? Use visual maps. Make your own diagrams both at the implementation stage (before class and aligned with the objectives) and at the final stage (interaction levels, feedback from students, outcomes, etc.).

- Understand how students get engaged with the different teaching/learning styles.

- Take the Learning Styles Quest yourself at http://www.learning-styles-online.com/inventory/questions.asp or  the use the Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire from Solomon and Felder at http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html 


 

Whatever you try make sure you are comfortable in doing it and, do not try everything at the same time. Chose your pace, try, evaluate and redesign if necessary.