Quick activities to get students talking with each other

Our campus was fortunate enough to have Dr. Christine Harrington on campus last month for a series of workshops.  An active learning classroom turned out to be a good fit for Christine's lively, participant-centered style of workshop delivery; the fact that each session was peppered with a variety of classroom activities turned out to be an added bonus of being a workshop participant.  A few of my favorite activities from the sessions are shared below.  Each activity described here makes use of index cards but small pieces of scratch paper are likely to work just as well.  (UWEC instructors - stop by Printing Services in Schofield 18 to pick up free pads of pre-cut scratch paper.)

Five Card Pass (in 5 minutes or less)

Provide students with a prompt (answer a question, make a list, etc.) and 1-2 minutes to write down their anonymous response on an index card.  With everyone out of their seats, students then exchange cards five times - the exchanges have to be with classmates that are not sitting at their pod/table.  The cards (and ideas) have now been randomly shuffled, so to speak, and students can be asked to do a number of things with the info on their new card - add, discuss, find an example, respond, etc. 

Brainwriting (5-10 minutes)

Provide students with a prompt, index cards, and 1-2 minutes to respond with one item or detail, writing it at the top of the card.  Next, instruct students to pass the index card to the right and write down another item/detail on the card that is now in front of them.  Same prompt, but the response must be unique - i.e., it cannot be the same as one written or read on other cards.  Continue passing and responding until the time is up or the possibilities have been exhausted.  

A more thorough overview of brainwriting is available on the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit wiki.  For an argument in favor of using brainwriting, check out this video from the Kellogg School of Management - it also highlights a variation of the brainwriting exercise described above.

Save the Last Word for Me (10-15 minutes)

This activity is designed to give everyone in the group a chance to be heard and practice listening skills.  Plus, it gives students something to do with an assigned reading and gets them talking (with each other!) about it.  See more information about this activity on The Teacher Toolkit site.

Often times, students are accustomed to directing questions, comments, responses, etc. to the instructor and need an extra nudge to, instead, exchange ideas with one another.  The activities shared here are relatively low-prep ways to get students engaging with one another in the classroom - and each has the possibility of being implemented in 15 minutes or less.  Perfect for getting students talking with one another with little preparation and each of these activities can be adapted to a wide variety of topics, prompts, and readings.

Options for randomly selecting students or groups

Reporting out and sharing with the class often act as a transition from students working in small groups to bringing the whole class back together.  Making sure that all students are contributing to the larger group/class effort is important; for a class to be a learning community, ideas and information must be shared by all members (Barkley, 2010, p.122).

What are some ways to include everyone?  Having a go-to strategy for determining who reports out can be handy, and fairness is key.  Students do not want to feel like they are being singled out; instead, it needs to be clear that everyone has an equal chance of being called on.  Some instructors write students' names on index cards, shuffling through to select the next contributor and making note of how many times each student has contributed to the class discussion.  Similarly, student names can be placed on strips of paper and randomly pulled from a bag, box, or whatever is convenient for the classroom.  Here are a few tech-based options that may be worth considering too:

• Random Name Picker! from ClassTools.net

If your class has 50 or fewer students, this web-based tool might be worth checking out.  I love its colorful, attention-grabbing design, and the fact that it is easy to use doesn't hurt either!  No login needed; it is easy to copy-and-paste student names from a text or Excel file and then save to access in the future with a unique URL.  

• Random Name Selector from Primary Technology

The Random Name Selector is also web-based and easy to use.  Copy students' names from an existing document or spreadsheet and paste into the Change Names area, click Go! and let the tool do the work.  The Save and Share button provides a unique URL so that the list of names can be accessed each time you use it in the classroom.  One advantage over the Random Name Picker is its ability to accommodate more than 50 names.  (I used it successfully with 90 names which accommodates most class sizes on our campus.)

• The Hat from Harmony Hollow Software

I heard about The Hat from J. Ricky Cox during his session on engaging large classes at the Teaching Professor Technology Conference.  It is a free download designed for Windows machines, and one of the potential advantages this tool offers is its ability to select more than one name at a time - useful for randomly assigning partners or groups.  See the short demo video from Harmony Hollow for more.

Entering group numbers instead of individual student names is also an option for each of these tools.  In the middle of a class period, I have a tendency to want to call on the groups who either finish first or are most likely to complete high quality work, but it is important to share the wealth and hear from each group (over time).  Having a way to randomly call on groups keeps them on their toes and helps guard against groups thinking that they can "get out" of sharing simply by not completing the task in the allotted time or doing poor quality work.

Reference

Barkley, E. F. (2010). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Active learning advice - from students to students

The end of the term is a natural time for reflection.  During our last face-to-face meeting of the semester, I asked the students to discuss their active learning experiences with their small groups and then post advice to be shared with fellow students on a Padlet wall.  Advice is always more powerful when it comes from peers.  So, here it is, straight from students who have made it through the active learning trenches:

Student-to-student advice for classes based on active learning.

I am grateful to each and every one of them for being adventurous and their willingness to try new things.  Thank you, students - the class wouldn't have been the same without your input, suggestions, questions, or participation!

Achieving "flow" with classroom activities

What factors affect whether or not students engage with an activity in the classroom?  The level of challenge associated with the activity is is one factor.  Another factor is the difficulty level of the coordinating content.  The combination of these two factors is also important.  If the activity and the content are both too easy, then students will be bored, disengaged.  If the challenge level of both the activity and the coordinating material are high, then students may give up or, worse, not even try.

The goal is for students to be engaged with the material through the activity.  This immersion is sometimes referred to as "flow" - I have been intrigued with the simplicity of this idea since hearing about it in a workshop a few weeks ago (see discussion, for example, in this short article from the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley).  Joel, our workshop presenter, pointed out that "flow" can be achieved by balancing complex with simple.  There are two basic pairings for classroom activities: (1) complex material with a simple activity, and (2) a more complex activity with material that is relatively simple.  Using the "Active Learning Continuum" conceptual framework as discussed by Bonwell and Sutherland (1996), a simple activity is one that is short in length and relatively unstructured while a complex activity can be described as one that is highly structured and has a longer duration.

Conceptual framework known as the "Active Learning Continuum" introduced by Bonwell and Sutherland (1996).

Pairing Complex Material with a Simple Activity
If students are being asked to dig into brand new material as part of an activity, then it might be wise to select an activity with easy instructions and/or one with a short list of tasks.  Learning new material often requires close attention, so a relatively easy activity allows students to focus on learning the content instead of learning the steps required as part of the activity. Classic examples of activities that are not-too-complex include brainstorming sessions, Think-Pair-Share, structured discussions (in which questions are provided), and a short writing assignment, e.g., Minute Paper.

"Flow" is achieved when complex is balanced with simple.  Either a simple activity for complex material or a complex activity paired with relatively simple material.

Complex Activity Paired with Material that is Relatively Simple

Drawing on our own personal experiences and review are two occasions when material is, generally speaking, "simple."  These are the times to pull out the activities that require a great deal of time and/or structure, including concept mapping, presentations, and debates.  When the material is familiar, students can focus on completing the tasks associated with complex activities.  

The simplicity of "flow" combined with the research documenting its potential for deeper learning is powerful.  This is my first introduction to the work of psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, who is credited with coining the term "flow," but I plan on digging in some more.  

Reference

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

What I learned from my first week teaching in an active learning classroom

In short: The active learning room changes almost everything.

I listened to our instructors who shared their experiences last semester, and I heard what they were saying, including:

• The environment is great for students working in small groups. 
• Even better if the students have something to do/work on together.
• Planning, organization, and clear instructions are a must for activities (and takes a lot of prep time!).
• Groups finish at different rates so need to have something planned for those who finish earlier.
• The teacher station being located in the middle of the room is a new experience to get used to.
• Students' attention is focused inward to what is happening at or in their groups/pods.
• Giving a lecture, even a mini one, can be a challenge (see all of the above for explanation as to why!).

I never doubted a word of this feedback, but it is a completely new thing to experience them myself.  I took these to heart when planning for the first day, and it went well.  Overall we used just about everything available to us - technology, group workstations, whiteboards, open space (for our mixer); we brainstormed, discussed, located info, reported out.  It felt like we pretty much did it all and that it went smoothly.

And then there was Day 2.

Let's just say that things didn't go according to plan.  A mixture of things contributed to Day 2 not living up to my expectations, and I have been mulling it all over since 12:50pm on Friday.  Here are what I believe to be some contributing factors (sharing just in case it becomes useful for others):

• Too much was planned for a 50-minute period.
• The questions I posed to the class were too many and not strategic enough.
• A pod computer died in the midst of a group activity, leaving one group stranded since the activity relied on each group being able to display on the monitor located at the pod.  This threw off the rhythm more than I expected it too.
• A student's input seemed to be a conversation killer following what was otherwise a useful brainstorming session.  (And in hindsight, of course, I realize I could have recovered better!)

I spent the weekend brainstorming ideas of my own: structure for class meeting times, classroom management, clearer ways to present instructions.  I know that it is possible for an active learning-based class to run smoothly - luckily I have insights from colleagues here on campus and my own first day experience to build on.  I am convinced that the planning and organizing is key.  Maybe I had fallen out of practice with doing this because my classes had hit a rhythm of sorts over the past few years; often times I could walk into the classroom armed with a couple of old standby _____ (fill in the blank here: applications, problems to solve, news headlines to analyze, data set to manipulate) and go with the flow.  Perhaps part of me figured that it is still the same content and structure (hybrid/blended) so this semester would be more about ramping up the student engagement and involvement that I have been working to incorporate over the past few years.  It is so much more.  In some ways I feel like I am new to teaching again even though it has been nearly ten years since I started.  (The level of detail I am now planning out reminds me of the days when I used to note when to use the overhead projector vs. chalkboard - just 5-6 years ago! - and how to transition.)  It is very possible that the Day 2 experience is exactly what I needed - a swift kick in the pants to make the rest of the semester as successful as possible.

Today, Day 3, was better.  Back on the upswing.  Days 4 and 5 will be even better.  It takes time to get a feel for what works best in the space during our allotted class time.  I will share a bit more about what worked (and what didn't) during Week 2 once it is complete.

*It is worth noting that if I would have reacted as if Day 2 was how it was always going to be in an active learning-based class, with group work, in that particular classroom, it wouldn't be very appealing to continue.  I am convinced that all days don't have to be like Day 2.  For me, at this time, it is worth it to keep trying, to find the balance between planning out class meetings - every activity (well, every 5 minutes of class time, really) - and going with the flow.  

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.

Planning for the first day of an active learning class

I have long believed that the first day of class is an opportunity to set the tone for the upcoming semester.  Ideally, the class environment will be one that fosters collaboration, discovery, and deep, meaningful learning.  Even with this outlook in place, figuring out what to do on that first day is often a challenge.  Sometimes there can even be a couple of hurdles to overcome. Class enrollment, for example, is often still in flux as students drop and add classes at the beginning of the term.  Student expectations can be another - how many of them will show up with the hope that they can hear a little bit about the syllabus and then leave?

An advanced apology to any of those students enrolled in my class this fall; it is highly unlikely that I will be reading the syllabus to you on the first day of class.  Will we take a look at it?  Probably.  If we do, it will likely be as part of an activity that asks you to work as part of a team.  A scavenger hunt-type activity, perhaps.  But there is a word of warning that comes along with that too.  You may have to generate your own list of things to look for first.  (I used to try to anticipate students' questions in designing this sort of activity, but doesn't it make more sense for students to get their actual questions answered?)  Hopefully the activity ends up sparking some discussion - maybe even some revisions to the syllabus too - which is perfect because the rest of the semester is likely to follow suit.

Sharing information about the course and addressing any potential anxieties related to expectations are both important for the first day, but I will probably kick things off with a different type of activity.  I prefer to pull out the syllabus later on after we have had a chance to break the ice and get a start on building community.  This is the tough part for me.  While others can pull off the light-hearted, sometimes silly, icebreakers, my heart just isn't in it, and I have no doubt the students can tell.  Instead, I am on the hunt for an activity that breaks the ice but also has a strong connection to the class.  Sometimes I try out an activity that connects with a key course concept, like the Candy Trading Game for an introductory-level economics course, but I may focus more on the learning environment this time around.  For example, I am interested in trying something similar to the Rainbow Mixer Little Idea for Teaching (LIFT) from the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Illinois State.  It reminds me of the Reciprocal Interview activity outlined in Teaching at its best by Linda B. Nilson but with the added encouragement for students to meet and chat with others located elsewhere in the classroom (that is, outside the groups they are already seated in).  Either activity provides the students with an opportunity to provide input about and influence the class environment, which is what I am most interested in.  It may even provide us with a decent segue into the brainstorming session for the syllabus scavenger hunt.

Both of the activities outlined above could easily fill a 50-minute class meeting, but I am hoping to streamline things and reserve the last 5-10 minutes for an exercise that highlights - and gets us started with - the applicability of the course material.  We'll see how things go!  Overall, I will be pleased if we can accomplish the following on the first day: breaking the ice, exchanging information, and building community; the three provide a solid foundation for what is to come this semester.

References:

McKeachie, W. J., & Svinicki, M. (2011). McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Nilson, L.B. (2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Countdown for course prep: one month to go!

August is here, which means that the fall term is right around the corner.  My mind seems to be constantly churning through ideas - course design, syllabus language, activities for the classroom, assignment options, etc.  I am ready to get some of the ideas down on paper to free up some brain resources!

I first laid eyes on McKeachie's Teaching Tips earlier this year (wish it would've been sooner - such a great resource!) and there on the first page of the table of contents is the breakdown of a chapter titled "Countdown for Course Preparation."  At the time, I made a mental note to return to this chapter when planning my fall course and experienced a moment of slight panic this morning upon realizing that the chapter kicks off with some tasks to complete three months prior to the course start date.  Luckily the course, Econometrics, is one I have taught before, so the wave of panic subsided once I realized that I have completed most of the tasks, which include identifying student learning goals and procuring any resources students will need for the course.  Next in line is the course syllabus; the recommendation in McKeachie's is to construct the syllabus two months prior before the first class meeting.  I have a draft put together, but I am interested in adding a statement about active learning (see examples gathered by the Center for Teaching and Learning at Boise State available here) and a graphic that shows how we will move through the material plus, more importantly, connections between topics and learning goals/objectives.  (If supplementing a syllabus with a graphic is new to you too, check out this post on the ProfHacker blog, Maryellen Weimer's take on it in this Teaching Professor blog entry, and, if you are also an economics instructor, "The Syllabus Evolved: Extended Graphic Syllabi for Economics Courses" by Sauer and Calimeris.)

Since the fall semester is just about one month away, McKeachie's recommends:

• planning for class meetings,
• selecting appropriate teaching methods, and
• selecting appropriate technology.

For me, decisions in one category tend to affect decisions related to the other categories.  The fall class is hybrid (blended) with our face-to-face meetings scheduled in an active learning classroom.  So, we will be using both a learning management system (D2L) and technology located in the classroom; since we have computers and large monitors for each group available to us while in class, then our face-to-face meetings can include data analysis, online scavenger hunts, consultations of online resources, constructing visuals, etc.  The active learning rooms are set up so that students are working in groups by default, so I am paying close attention to group-based learning methods as I construct plans for the face-to-face meetings and select the best environment - online, face-to-face, or both - for each activity.  I will continue to work on these over the upcoming weeks and then check in again at the two week and one week (before the first class) marks, which are the upcoming checkpoints in the countdown for course preparation include.

In all the books and resources I have skimmed or read, the timeline approach to course prep in McKeachie's stands out to me as being unique.  Do you know of other resources out there that also offer timing-related recommendations for preparing upcoming courses?

Reference:

McKeachie, W. J., & Svinicki, M. (2011). McKeachie's teaching tips: Strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers (13th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

What are students and instructors doing while in an active learning classroom?

A chart highlighting this very comparison was included in "Dissecting the Classroom," an article published on February 10th in The Chronicle of Higher Education.  I was so taken by the chart's simple yet powerful statement that I even tracked down a printer and tacked the visual to my bulletin board where it has been waiting for months to be shared.  Here it is:

The data comes from two representative classes - one lecture-based and one that incorporates active learning strategies - that are a subset of the larger study conducted by Smith et al. (2013).  The graphic from the published study uses pie charts instead of bar graphs (see Figure 4 from the published article, available here), but the basic message is clear no matter how it is delivered.  In the lecture-based class, students are primarily listening and the instructor is, no surprise, primarily lecturing with an occasional response to a question or a follow up of some kind.  The other class, the interactive/active learning one, identifies a variety of activities for both students and the instructor; students are still listening, but they are also thinking, working in groups, asking and answering questions, and discussing.  Notice that lecturing is still happening in the active learning class too; however, it is mixed with eight other types of activities and it takes a back seat to guiding and discussing with students.

There are a number of additional takeaways and possible points of discussion here.  One is a reminder that "active learning" is a broad term or phrase - it doesn't refer to one specific activity.  Instead, it refers to students being engaged in the learning process because they are actively doing something.  It is ok to include lecture in a class that includes active learning.  (Sometimes it seems as though lecture and active learning cannot be used in the same statement, but this is not the case.)  Lecture can be a useful mode of instruction for certain things, but the key is to use lecture together with other activities.

For those who are interested in how the students' and instructors' classroom activities were tracked, the tracking form and related details are discussed in the Smith et al. (2013) article, published in CBE Life Sciences Education and accessible here, as well as the article from the Chronicle.

Driver or passenger?

Last week I grabbed Design for How People Learn, written by Julie Dirksen, off the CETL bookshelves.  Why I reached for this particular book was based, at least partly, on the way the font and color scheme jumped out at me (by design, no?) but also because I am always curious about how we learn.  I have a collection of casual observations from my own classrooms, both physical and virtual, but how well do those observations translate across situations?  The answer to that question isn't entirely clear just yet, but I just had to share something in the meantime.  Another question, in fact.  One that is posed by Ms. Dirksen in her book on p.181:

Let's say you have to drive to a destination that you've only been to once before.  Are you more likely to remember how to get there if, on your previous visit, you:

a. drove yourself, or

b. were a passenger in the car? 

This is posed to the reader within a section that focuses on helping the learner with transfer and application, and while I see how it fits into that particular discussion, I am also storing this question away for future discussions of active learning.  If the goal is for students to be able reach the destination, shouldn't we give them an opportunity to drive?  Being a passenger is often an enjoyable experience.  You have an opportunity to enjoy the view, free to check your phone, join in on conversation when you choose, etc.  But you also are passing along most of the responsibility of reaching the destination to the driver.  An active learning classroom, compared to a traditional classroom, offers students more opportunities to drive.  This is a helpful step.  However, there is another step that is necessary: the instructor has to be willing to step aside and allow learners to occupy the driver's seat.  The instructor is still fulfilling a useful role.  After all, who better to provide some guidance than someone who has been there before?

How can we structure a learning experience or a class period that provides students with an opportunity to drive?  Ms. Dirksen offers one possible strategy:

1. Work through some examples.

2. Have the students identify the concepts they saw in the examples.

3. Clarify the concepts and correct any misconceptions using the original examples as context.

4. Have the learners apply those concepts to further examples. 

That is, instead of telling the students all about the concepts up front, first provide them with an opportunity to recognize or discover the concepts, following up with discussion and additional application.

Reference:

Dirksen, J. (2012). Design for How People Learn. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.

Collaborative learning as a form of active learning

The active learning classrooms have reinvigorated the ongoing discussion about students working in groups.  How can/should groups be formed?  What leads to students working together effectively?  How can collaboration be encouraged?  One post alone cannot offer sufficient answers to all of these questions, so consider this the start of a longer, always-in-progress, response.

According to Weimer (2002), "...like every other instructional method, good group learning experiences do not happen automatically" (p.88).  Planning is needed.  I firmly believe that students collaborating with one another has great potential, but group members working together effectively has been a work-in-progress for me for years.  At one point, I decided to stop guessing and to start asking students, informally, what it was about group work that created barriers to effective collaboration, and most student feedback I have received thus far seems to converge on a few points:

• Meeting with group members outside of scheduled class time is often a challenge.
• Fear that lack of effort/poor quality work by one or more group members will negatively impact the grade.
• The work is sometimes - or frequently - unevenly distributed across group members.

There is no doubt that points two and three are intertwined, and the first point might sometimes play a supporting role there too. While its contents are not overly surprising, the list does offer some good news.  If students perceive these sorts of items to be barriers, then addressing one or more of these concerns may help to increase the level and/or quality of student collaboration.

Also worth pointing out is the fact that the active learning classrooms have the potential to help out here.  The students are, by default, organized into pods of up to six students in the active learning rooms, and each pod is equipped with a computer and large widescreen monitor for activities that ask the groups to refer to artifacts (e.g., documents, images, web resources) and/or produce something (e.g., problem solving steps, description, blog post, evidence that supports a claim).  Allocating class time for the group to plan, discuss, and accomplish tasks will help to eliminate or reduce the need for students to meet with group members outside of class.  The physical setup of an active learning room lends itself better to students collaborating with another vs. the layout of a traditional lecture hall or a classroom with fixed tables.

A handful of our active learning instructors teach hybrid (blended) classes with some scheduled class meetings replaced with online activities and/or content, and this presents a second option for alleviating the first concern: (1) group members are, technically speaking, available, and (2) the active learning classroom is open for students to meet in their groups during those scheduled class times that have been replaced with online material.  Groups wouldn't be required to meet in the classroom during that time, but they also wouldn't be able to say that no one could meet outside of class either.

So what can be done to address the concerns over grades and the uneven distribution of work?  Individual accountability is the suggestion from both Kagan (1995) and Weimer (2002).  Both reiterate the important fact that students' course grades are intended to reflect individual progress towards meeting the course objectives.  There are various ways to allow for individual accountability.  For one, each group member can be asked to submit individual materials that will then provide a foundation for the group's assignment - either each person submits an individual attempt of an identical task or the tasks that make up the larger group assignment are divided up across group members and each individual must submit the assigned component (in addition to the group submitting the end product).  As long as the individual's work is incorporated into the grade, then this will help to minimize the impact of any free loaders.

Even Horton (2012), in E-Learning by Design, highlights the need to fairly evaluate individuals in team learning environments: "Decide how to determine whether the team accomplished its objective and how much each member contributed" (p.499).  I have to admit that I wasn't expecting a lengthy discussion of team learning in a text focused on e-learning, but it is great when best practices translate across modes of instruction!

References:

Horton, W. (2012). E-learning by design (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.

Kagan, S. (1995). Group grades miss the mark. Cooperative Learning and College Teaching, 6(1), 6-8.

Weimer, M. (2002). Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice. San Francisco, CA:      Jossey-Bass.

Use of class time in an active learning classroom

The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) is facilitating a Community of Practice series for active learning instructors this semester.  The meetings provide an opportunity for the instructors to get together to discuss activity ideas, students working in groups, classroom challenges, strategies for student engagement - plus anything else that comes up.

Our series kicked off last week with a group of instructors who are currently teaching in the new Centennial Hall active learning classrooms.  To get the conversation started, I threw out the question I wanted to be sure the group had time to discuss:

Student "pods" in one of Centennial Hall's
active learning classrooms

What is happening in the active learning classroom that is different from what typically happens in a traditional classroom?

The instructors all settled on an important observation as the starting point for this discussion... the students and what they are working on in their groups (pods) is the focus.  This is certainly a change from a lecture hall where the instructor, and what is happening at the front of the classroom, is the focal point.  All agreed that this shift necessitates change in the way the class period is structured; this has been documented elsewhere by other campuses with active learning spaces (see this discussion from the U of M, for example), but a discovery of any kind always resonates a bit more when it hits closer to home.

The transition to teaching in an active learning classroom is likely to be easier for instructors who frequently ask students to work in groups compared with those who primarily focus on delivering content through lecture since the setup of the active learning rooms lends itself better to group work.  Each of the instructors present for our first meeting acknowledged the need to work with the classroom environment; trying to continue on with in-class content delivery through lecture in one of these active learning spaces is likely to be a losing battle since students' focus is not on the instructor.

This transition takes time, and each instructor is at a different point in the transition process.  One of the participating instructors, Erin Devlin, taught one day per week in an active learning classroom during the fall semester, and, as a result, she has already developed a handful of in-class activities that work well for this type of classroom environment.  For others, this is the first semester that they have had an opportunity to teach in a space that is conducive to group work (a lecture hall with stadium seating and fixed chairs presents certain hurdles for students working in groups!), so it will take time to develop ideas for utilizing the new space.  A series of ideas and examples will be shared in future posts in an effort to help with this process.