Active Learning: Thinking and Doing

Joanne Chesley, Ed.DMay 26, 2009

What is the approach?What are the consequences?

How do you engage effectively?What evidence is there that this approach is productive?

How do you move from teacher- centered to learner-centered?

For a minute or two think of a lecture that has always stayed

with you….if you can.

What did you learn?

Think of a learning experience that you had at sometime that was not a lecture, that you have always recalled.

• Why has it stayed with you?• What did you learn?

Active learning includes:

DiscussionCooperative learningCollaborative learningProblem based learning Active, experiential learningCommunity or client based experiencesTrust to take risksGuide on the side, not sage on the stage

Let’s compare!Teacher Centered Learner Centered

Provide/deliver instruction Provide/deliver learning

Improve quality of instruction Improve quality of learning

Achieve access for diverse students

Achieve success for diverse students

Transfer knowledge from teacher to student

Elicit learner inquiry and active construction of knowledge

Faculty RolesInstruction Paradigm Learning Paradigm

Instructors and students act independently an in isolation

Instructors and students work in teams

Instructors classify and sort students

Instructors try to develop every students’ competencies and talents

Faculty are primarily lecturers; all students are the same

Faculty are primarily designers of learning methods and environments

The learner-centered approach grows out of Cognitive-Structural Developmental Theories that look at received knowing, subjective knowing, procedural knowing, and constructed knowing (Belenky, 1986) and absolute knowing, traditional knowing and independent knowing (Magolda, 1992).

• Since 1898 there have been over 600 experimental studies and 100 correlational studies of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts.

• The findings tell us that cooperation compared to competition and individual efforts, typically results in: – Greater efforts to achieve– More positive relationships among students

greater psychological health (Johnson, Johnson, Smith, 1998. Active Learning in the Classroom)

Learning Theory

Instruction Paradigm Learning Paradigm

Learning is cumulative and linear

Learning is a nesting and interacting of frameworks

storehouse of knowledge metaphor

Learning how to ride a bicycle metaphor

Knowledge comes in chunks and bites

Knowledge is constructed, created by students

Knowledge exists out there Knowledge exists in each person’s mind and is shaped by individual experiences

• People learn in different settings

• We spend 14% of our time in school, 53% in home and community and 33% asleep.

• We should not negate the experiences one brings to the classroom from the home and community.

Faculty can begin to make this change by:

1) building learning communities

2) Redesigning their 25 most ‘top- down’, heavily enrolled courses

• Improvements in Learning at Miami University:

5pt Likert scale; no impact to substantial impact n=395 responses/61% of invited research done in 2005/ based on the Teaching Goals Inventory, Angelo

&Cross, 1993

• Ability to work productively with others (3.5)• Openness to new ideas (3.46)• Capacity to think for oneself (3.44)• Understanding of perspectives/values of

course discipline (3.39)• Ability to think holistically (3.39)

• Ability to think creatively (3.38)• Ability to synthesize and integrate information

and ideas (3.37)• Improved learning of concepts and theories

(3.36)• Problem solving skills (3.35)• Ability to apply principles and generalizations

already learned to new problems and situations (3.35)

• Faculty responses yielded these results:

• Better class discussion and engagement (3.58)• Better classroom atmosphere (3.50)• Better papers and writing assignments (3.46)• Students more interested (3.46)• More successful achievement of the learning

objectives (3.38)

What worked?

Faculty reported: Experiential Learning (4.07)Student-centered learning (3.99)Discussion (3.84)Cooperative or Collaborative (3.84)Writing (3.54)

end