Instructional Strategies & Learning Objectives

This post is part of an ongoing conversation about planning an active learning-based class for Fall 2014; the initial post outlines some priorities for the next few weeks, and a second post discusses some possible plans for the first class meeting.

Planning is key for successful active learning sessions.  As I mentioned last week, I am in the midst of planning class meetings for a course with content that is familiar, but this will be the first semester the class meets in an active learning classroom; as a result, I am in the midst of identifying appropriate activities and instructional strategies for various topics.  In doing so, I stumbled across this page from Carnegie Mellon which summarizes some commonly used instructional strategies with links to additional information and considerations.  A bonus is that coordinating learning objectives are listed alongside the instructional methods.  So, if you already have a sense of the goal for a particular topic, lesson, or class meeting but are still looking for ideas on how to approach it, this might be of some help.  Alternatively, if you already know of a great approach for a particular topic, this could help streamline the process of identifying an appropriate learning objective.

Note: The entire Design & Teach a Course site from the Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon is a great resource - not to mention the other available categories (technology, assessment, solve a teaching problem, etc.).

Bonwell and Sutherland (1996) describe active learning activities as lying along a continuum; tasks range from simple to complex.  Plus, active learning activities can be mixed in with existing instructional strategies (e.g., lecturing and Q&A) and introduced gradually.  These are helpful details to keep in mind, especially if active learning is a new adventure.  Someone who already has lectures prepared, for example, can break a 45-minute lecture into three smaller mini-lectures, pausing after each mini-lecture to allow students to review notes in pairs or small groups.  Bonwell and Sutherland (1996) identify this "pause procedure" as an example of a simple active learning task; it could also be paired with a Q&A session (in the spirit of "Think-Pair-Share") and/or a short exercise requiring students to apply the information from the mini-lecture.  Abruptly switching instructional strategies is not required or even recommended.  Instead, the number of (or complexity level of) active learning activities can be increased over time, whether that is within a single semester or across semesters.

Reference:

Bonwell, C. C., and T. E. Sutherland (1996). The active learning continuum: Choosing activities to engage students in the classroom. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 1996 (67), 3-16.