UCITE

Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.

  - "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever" by Arthur W. Chickering and Stephen C. Ehrmann

Learning is both an intensively personal and yet intensely social process. It is personal because when learning occurs it involves a change in our view of the world, and this new worldview is something we have to construct and come to terms with. It is not something that can be imposed from outside. Since changing our belief structure is never easy, this requires some level of personal struggle, especially when the new ideas challenge some deeply held but unrecognized pre-existing beliefs. I am always fascinated when teaching physics concepts to people who claim that they "never encountered these things before" to see how strongly their hidden beliefs influence how they interpret their experiences in the classroom. Everyone has strong ideas on how things should be, even if they have no direct prior experience with it. Overcoming these prior beliefs is not easy and we should be aware that a clear presentation of logic and facts (the staple of the lecture) is not, by themselves, sufficient to overcome them. This is where active learning techniques are required.

Active learning is hard to define because it is primarily an umbrella term that encompasses a wide range of teaching and learning strategies. It is perhaps easier to define by what it is not. Active learning is not occurring when students are passively listening to an instructor and copying what the lecturer is saying, as often occurs in a lecture format.

This does not mean that a lecture is by definition not conducive to learning. A good lecture has its place in the scheme of learning and can enthrall and fascinate the listener, drawing him or her into the subject and completely engaging them. But this function of a lecture is not to stimulate the learner into engaging in active learning later and elsewhere. It is a rare and gifted lecturer who can do this repeatedly or over a long stretch of time.

There is little doubt that an excessive dependence on the straight lecture format is likely to result in the listener's mind beginning to wander, resulting in disengagement from the class and merely resulting in the generation of notes. Research indicates that almost any listener in almost any forum starts to have his or her mind wander after about 10 minutes of listening. Effective and experienced lecturers can sense this loss in attention and retrieve it by:

• changing their tone of voice
• changing the content of presentation (say by introducing an anecdote)
• switching the mode of presentation (say by introducing a video or audio segment or an overhead)
• pausing to ask questions or by making other similar changes.

But this is not easy to do, and after awhile, even these changes in the routine can become routine, and you start losing listeners again. It poses a tremendous burden on the instructor who has to develop many of the skills possessed by entertainers to keep audiences engaged.

Active learning techniques are designed to draw the learner into the learning process by making them active participants in what is going on during the class itself. They stem from the premise that the most effective learning occurs by what comes out of the learner, not by what goes in.

	The instructor speaks for about 10 minutes, and then devotes a few minutes to pose questions for the class to discuss in small groups followed by a whole class discussion. The questions should be framed in such a way as to stimulate interest in the material being covered, and be either related to the material covered by the instructor in the previous 10 minutes (thus allowing the listeners to collect their thoughts on the material and synthesize what they learned) or it should try and focus attention on the key ideas that will be coming up in the next 10 minutes, so that the instructors comments become easier to comprehend.
	The times allotted for the lecture segments and the class discussion can vary depending on the circumstances. Instructors who have never tried this might be apprehensive that the time allocated for class discussion in small groups takes time away from the instructor and thus reduces coverage of material. But this fear is based on the assumption that the learners are engaged while just listening, and this is simply not the case. Having the students actively involved in discussions can actually increase the amount of 'on-task' time of learners (see principle 5), and this is what really determines the amount learned.

 

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.