Posts Tagged ‘active learning activities’
May 15 - Learner-Centered Teaching: Good Places to Begin
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
It’s probably the question I’m most asked in workshops on learner-centered teaching. “What are some good places to start? My students aren’t used to learner-centered approaches.” Sometimes the questioner is honest enough to add, “and I haven’t used many previously.” Before the specifics, here’s some general recommendations: start slowly (for example, don’t add 14 learner-centered strategies to a mostly lecture course); try simple, reasonably straightforward activities first; and define success before implementing the activity. As for those “good places” to begin infusing your teaching with learner-centered strategies, here are some approaches to try.
April 9 - Active Learning: Changed Attitudes and Improved Performance
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Teaching Strategies
In reviewing the research on active learning in statistics, the authors of the article cited below, who are statistics faculty themselves, found some research in which certain active learning experiences did not produce measurable gains on exam performance. They “suspect the key components of successful active learning approaches are using activities to explain concepts and requiring students to demonstrate that they understand these concepts by having them answer very specific rather than general questions.” (p. 3)
February 20 - Improving Teaching One Class at a Time
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Can we reform teaching and learning throughout higher education one class at a time? I used to think so, but the pace of change has made me less optimistic. I just finished preparing an article for The Teaching Professor newsletter that reports the results of a survey of 744 full- and part-time faculty teaching at eight two-year technical colleges across Georgia. The researchers presented the respondents with a list of 18 instructional strategies and asked them to identify how often they used each one in their last 10 class sessions. Over 90% of the respondents said they lectured for four or more class sessions with more than 50% of those saying they lectured during all 10 class sessions.
October 23 - Lecture Alternatives: Four Strategies to Engage Students
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Lectures are still a valuable pedagogical tool, but sometimes lectures are more effective when you use them a little less often and intersperse them with some other tools and techniques. Even slightly shifting the balance of classes can lead to better outcomes for students and, ultimately, better evaluations for you.
September 28 - An Approach that Decreases Failure Rates in Introductory Courses
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
This study begins with some pretty bleak facts. It lists other research documenting the failure rates for introductory courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. Some are as high as 85 percent; only two are less than 30 percent. “Failure has grave consequences. In addition to the emotional and financial toll that failing students bear, they may take longer to graduate, leave the STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] disciplines or drop out of school entirely.” (p. 175) The question is whether there might be approaches to teaching these courses (and others at the introductory level) that reduce failure rates without decreasing course rigor.
