On Active Learning: from experts and practitioners

This week in class we read the article Active Learning Leads to Higher Grades and Fewer Failing Students in Science, Math and Engineering. The wired magazine article discussed the increase in performance of students that were exposed to active learning as opposed to traditional lecture.

Quotes from class participants when responding to the article:

Active learning engages students by increasing students' accountability and collaboration through activities and/or discussion in class in order to emphasize higher-order thinking, real-world skills, and foster a teamwork mentality. 

Active learning engages students in the process of learning through providing multiple modalities to enhance an authentic learning experience.  Allowing students to make choices in their learning experience and emphasizing critical thinking through collaboration, creativity, and communication among students.

I think people make assumptions about the length of time one has been teaching. In the end, the time planning and crafting lessons and engaging students really makes a difference. 

This proves that students need information, the time to manipulate the information/content, and the ability to be guided and allowed to discover what the content/information means to them. 

A well-rendered graphic of the theories presented by Edgar Dale regarding human learning from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/29/Cone_of_learning_export_11x17.png

Feedback

I also received some important feedback on incorporating more active learning strategies and some ideas about which types of activities the students preferred.  The feedback was solicited at the beginning of the discussion. As the students read the article and responded there seemed to be increasing evidence that their ideas and preferences were aligned with the findings of the researchers. I wonder if we asked students for feedback regularly if we could adjust our teaching styles and methodologies to better meet the need for active learning.

created by rcarnill90 for this post in Canva

What We Already Knew

At the end of the article I asked the students to view the video below as it related to active learning theory. When we discussed the video we found we already knew a lot about the topic. Now what was left was to begin applying our knowledge to make it our practice, as I plan to do in the future class meetings for EDU585.