The periodic critiques of the research make the same points. 1) We don’t know what learning styles are. Researchers haven’t agreed on whether they are attributes, preferences, habits, strategies, or biological traits. We don’t know if they are cognitive, neurological, psychological, or situational. 2) The reliability and validity of the many instruments created to measure styles are regularly challenged. 3) No convincing data links learning styles to improved learning. Since the 1970s, critics have been making these points. They pretty much conclude that if you want to predict achievement for a particular learning style or match a teaching method to a learning style, you would have as much chance of success using signs of the zodiac.

But I did find some jewels buried in the landfill. Learning style ideas grew out of classroom wisdom. Given any pedagogical effort, some students learn and some do not. Every teacher encounters students who seem to learn in unexpected ways. Every student sometimes gets stumped by methods that work for everyone else. Thus 40-plus years of self-serving replications and furious critiques make abundantly clear that people learn in different ways. Neuroscientists agree that every brain is unique—more singular in structure than DNA or fingerprints.

We haven’t figured out how to deal with this diversity in learning. We decide what to do in the classroom based on crude averages or on the techniques that we like or do best, leaving many students to flounder or figure out how to learn on their own.

To paraphrase artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky, there is no such thing as a typical student because each brain contains many different kinds and combinations of resources. Neuroscience research suggests that the brain is not one general learning system but consists of many specialized modules developed over eons of evolution. While those modules vary, their network connections differ even more depending on genetics and experience. Thus every student brings to the classroom wiring, experiences, assumptions, and hidden semi-autonomous processes that we call euphemistically “prior knowledge.”

For example: Some students do well by starting with abstractions and working down to the concrete details. Others prefer to begin with examples and generalize abstractions. Some learn in brief spurts and others in extended periods. Students may do well by solving many easy problems while others thrive by struggling with a few hard ones. Success promotes learning in some students while failure works better for others. Some students learn impulsively, leaping into complex problems and flailing until they get a handle, while other take their time and reconnoiter carefully before proceeding to solutions. We aspire to teach in ways that promote learning, but any rule we set makes it easy for some and impossible for others.

Is there a way to cope with this bewildering array of learning options? Suppose we acknowledged that the most important work in the classroom is the work of learning that students do. Since the research on learning styles has failed to confirm that how we present material can improve student learning, maybe we should focus on what students do with course materials and think of our role more as managing a work team than transmitting metaphorical “content.”

Muska Mosston once differentiated teaching types by who made the learning decisions—teacher or student. He conceived a spectrum that ran from command, where instructors make all the decisions, through problem solving, where students make most decisions, to self-directed learning, where students make all decisions. Mosston’s ideas came from coaching. We often think of exemplary athletic performances as automatic, but that is an oversimplification. Repetition means predictability, and that gives advantage to your opponent. Elite players learn to adjust their performance to ongoing conditions. Athletes must become self-coaching to make quality decisions in the rapid changes of games.

One of the outcomes of students making decisions about how they will learn and what standards of performance they will strive for is customization. Students do the customization within the teachers’ framework. Teachers don’t attempt to do the impossible—predict students’ learning variations and design appropriate exercises. The teaching task becomes how to design a classroom situation that maximizes students’ opportunities to choose and to learn from the results of those choices.

Teachers then can focus on their most creative work—observing students’ actions and interceding to correct them. What do learners do with course materials? How do they tackle problems? What assumptions do they use? What do they do when they fail? Answers to those questions would most definitely improve our teaching.

A bit surprised, I ended up leaving the landfill hopeful.

Excerpted from Getting Over Learning Styles, The Teaching Professor, 25.6 (2011): 4,5.

They do go on to point out that there are claims inherent in the notion of learning styles that are supported by the research. The learning style theorists do have this correct: “Learners are different from each other, these differences affect their performance, and teachers should take these differences into account.” (p. 33)

Riener and Willingham identify four areas of difference that exist between learners. First, learners vary in their ability to learn certain kinds of content. We may call this talent, ability, or intelligence, but we have all seen those students who master the material easily and others who struggle with it mightily. Second, and not entirely disconnected from the first, students have different interests. Some love music, others like to solve problems, and still others find their passion in sports. These interests motivate their involvement in and commitment to learning. Third, students bring to any learning task different kinds and levels of background knowledge, and what they bring influences their learning. If a student doesn’t bring basic math skills to a college calculus course, success in that course is highly unlikely. And finally, some students have specific learning disabilities (dyslexia, for example) that directly influence how they learn. Clearly, not all learners are the same.

However, proponents of learning styles go further. They believe that “learners have preferences about how to learn that are independent of both ability and content and have meaningful implications for their learning.” (p. 34) One learning style is not assumed to be better than others, but is rather preferred by the learner. “However, when these tendencies are put to the test under controlled conditions, they make no difference—learning is equivalent whether students learn in the preferred mode or not.” (p. 34) So, what learning style proponents have long advocated—matching the mode of instruction to the preferred learning style—is not supported by research. The review of research articles identifies the problems with much of the research that has been used to support the need for teachers to accommodate learning style differences.

Riener and Willingham point out that the idea of learning styles is widely known among postsecondary teachers and students. They cite research showing that 90 percent of the students agreed that “people have their own learning style.” This belief can constrain learners—if a student thinks she’s a visual learner and the instructor is not supporting the presentation of material visually, then the student may think she can’t learn it.

Assessing students’ learning styles and not soliciting feedback on their background knowledge is a waste of time, according to Riener and Willingham. They conclude with what they call the “punch line”: “Students differ in their abilities, interests, and background knowledge, but not in their learning styles. Students may have preferences about how to learn, but no evidence suggests that catering to those preferences will lead to better learning.”

If you’d like to learn more, both of the articles referenced below are worth consulting.

References: Paschler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., and Bjork, R. (2010). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Riener, C. and Willingham, D. (2010). The myth of learning styles. Change, (September/October), 32-35.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 25.1 (2011): 5.

There are a number of ways of dealing with silent students in multicultural classroom setting. For instructors of international students, it is important to note cross cultural perspectives in course readings and grading the classroom discussion. Because of lack of language proficiency or being unfamiliar with the American classroom culture, some students from other countries feel stressed and frustrated. To bridge this gap of international students, instructors could adopt strategies such as e-mailing study questions beforehand, giving clear directions and asking specific questions or summarizing important points of the discussions (Tatar, 2005).

Brookfield (2006) suggested teacher should research what students know, speak and experience as a part of understanding the classroom so that the lessons would be inclusive for both native and foreign students.

In a traditional classroom, a teacher speaks more than his or her students. Sometimes, instructors should be silent and observe how it affects students or encourage speaking up. The balance of the class would be when both domestic students and international students get an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and perspectives as a part of class discussion. A skillful teacher always allows enough time to her/his students to respond instead of expecting immediate responses to every question. Svinivki and McKeachie (2011) recommended a silence for 5 to 30 seconds for better outcomes in discussion. Instructors are expected to know the significance of cultural values and meanings in foreign cultures. Sometimes no eye contact or being silent does not necessary mean non participation.

The U.S. students would benefit from the active participation of foreign students in the class. As they understand diverse social, cultural and linguistic experiences and perceptions of foreign students, the U.S. students should encourage and let foreign students speak in the class.

Instead of being bound with home culture and educational experiences, international students also should look for ways to familiarize themselves with the host culture. Since their main goal of overseas study is to earn a foreign education, they should expose themselves to various social norms, cultures, and beliefs in the U.S. They should speak up in the class discussion because their voices and experiences are required as much as their American counterparts.

Conclusion
The nature of silence is complex in any classroom with foreign or domestic students. However, the American classroom requires them to participate as this phenomenon is graded. For those international students who come from distinct social and cultural backgrounds, they always face a challenge when speaking in class.

Instructors sometimes falsely assume that non speaking students are not engaged in the learning. Some studies have reported that instructors incorrectly misinterpret students’ silence as disengagement when using conventional understandings of silence but those silent students were engaging through other means such as paying attention, taking notes, or thinking about the material presented in class (Meyer, 2009; Meyer & Hunt, 2004). It appears, therefore, that a closer inspection of how international students engage in the classroom is essential. The relationship between silence and classroom expectations should be carefully examined. Consequently, nowhere is it more important to study silence than in a classroom context.

Given that some students prefer to remain silent in various situations, while others are more willing to talk in class, it is reasonable to speculate that students have different preferences for participation in the classroom. For both international and domestic students, teachers should evaluate the classroom participation and the nature of silence with the knowledge of their ethnic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

References
Armstrong, P. (2007, July). Cultures of silence: Giving voice to marginalized communities. Paper presented at the meeting of the Standing Conference on University Research and Teaching in the Education of Adults, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Brookfield, S. (2006). The Skillful Teacher: On Techniques, Trust, and Tesponsiveness in the
Classroom (2nd edition), Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Jaworski, A. (2005). Introduction: Silence in institutional and intercultural contexts. Multilingua, 24, 1–6.

Harumi, S. (2010). Classroom Silence: Voices from Japanese EFL Learners. English Language
Teaching Journal, 65 (1), 1-10.

Liu, J. (2001). Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in U.S. universities: An emic
perspective. Westport, Conn: Ablex Publishing House.

Meyer, K. R. (2009, November). Student classroom participation: Exploring student definitions
of, motivations for, and recommendations regarding participation. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL.

Meyer, K. R., & Hunt, S. K. (2004, April). Rethinking evaluation strategies for student participation. Paper presented at the meeting of the Central States Communication Association, Cleveland, OH.

Nakane, I. (2005). Negotiating Silence and Speech in the Classroom. Multilingua, 24, 75-100.
Petress, K. (2001). The Ethics of Student Classroom Silence. Journal of Instructional
Psychology, 28, 104-107.

Ping, W. (2010). A Case Study of an In-class Silent Postgraduate Chinese Student in London
Metropolitan University: A Journey of Learning. TESOL Journal, 2, 207-214.

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

Tatar, S. (2008). Classroom Participation by International Students: The Case of Turkish
Graduate Students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 12, 204-221.

Krishna Bista is an international graduate student from Nepal at Arkansas State University. His e-mail is Krishna.Bista@smail.astate.edu

In this article, I have explored the nature of silence from my personal experience as an international student among American and non-American peers in the United States. I explain my experiences across five broad categories.

1. A Self-Reported or Analyzed Silence in Classroom. In my first semester, I was nervous in class discussions although my level of English was fairly good. I perspired a lot and lost my train of thoughts while speaking. My English sounded awkward and the class and the professor did not understand my accented English. I did not join class discussion out of fear that I would be unable to deal with the possible conflicts or misunderstandings. My self-esteem was low and I felt a sense of incompetence being in a graduate class.

In my experience, the communicative language is a barrier for many non-native English speaking students. Those who have a lower level of English proficiency faced problems in class participation which naturally forced them to be silent in the class. Previous research suggests that learners feared appearing foolish by making mistakes such as simple errors in grammar or pronunciation imperfections (Harumi, 2010; Tatar, 2008; Nakane, 2005).

2. Lack of Understanding of Academic Culture. Growing up in chalk and duster classrooms, I mostly depended on teachers’ lectures for course materials and preparation for the finals. The Nepalese classroom, especially in rural districts, did not have basic teaching aids such as computers, televisions or copiers. Class attendance or course assignments were not the norms in the university system. Coming from that background to the American classroom, I was as lost as a crow in the mist. I was not taught how to participate in the American classroom. In Nepal, students are expected to be quiet in the classroom. I was required to ask permission upon entering and I was not allowed to answer a question without standing. I grew up being loyal and respectful to elders, teachers, and relatives. I did not know that being silent was a problem in the American classrooms.

3. Indigenous Knowledge Sharing/ Fear of Cultural Mistake I felt awkward and shameful to share my ethnic background to the class. Cultural stereotype image such as a poor social and cultural background sometimes became a barrier for me to not to speak up of what I knew. One of my friends said, “After watching the movie, The Slumdog Millionaire (2008), I found India is a very dirty and poor country. Actually, I had expected it better.” I felt sad hearing that I was from a dirty country even though I am not from India. I was silent instead of sharing my experience. “I explored sad sides of the country in education, development and technology when I started knowing more about Nepal,” said my teacher who ran a comparative education project in Nepal. Such anecdotes also discouraged me from sharing my views in the classes. Research has shown that such social and cultural differences do not encourage foreign students to speak up in the class. For example, Chinese and Japanese students’ such ethnic and cultural knowledge contributed to silence in the classroom (Ping, 2010; Nakane, 2005).

4. Strong Beliefs on Traditional Learning Style. My teachers from the school and college were happy if their students were silent in the classroom. It was the classroom requirement to listen to the lectures of the teacher. It was an easy way for teachers to manage a class with many students (sometimes 60 or more), if their students were silent. The mode of instruction was also teacher-centered. Teachers gave lectures no matter what the grade levels and students were. Parents were also convinced that the more their children listened to the lectures, the better they would score on the finals. Therefore, in my context, I was forced /trained to be silent in the class.

Like my situation, international students cannot isolate their home cultures and learning styles in the U.S. Also, teacher-centered instruction is highly practiced in many Asian countries such as Bhutan, China, India, Japan, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sir Lanka. For Chinese students, the traditional learning style is connected to the Confucian concept of education (Liu, 2001). For students from India and Nepal, it is connected to the festival of learning, i.e. Saraswati Pooja. Because of such cultural backgrounds, Asian learners do not express themselves in American classrooms (Ping, 2010; Liu; 2001; Meyer, 2009).

5. Dynamics of Classroom RequirementsI did not know at first that speaking in the American classroom means earning a grade. From primary schools to graduate program in Nepal, none of the students’ class participation was graded. Students were not required to present in the university classroom. There were not any attendance sheets for undergraduate and graduate students at Tribhuvan University, the oldest university in the country. During the first semester, it was hard for me to believe that my classroom speaking activities were graded. I noticed native students speaking on various topics in the classroom. Mostly they brought the issues of their homes, family members and work places in the classroom. For me, it was unacceptable to talk about such personal things in the class. Neither the teachers, nor the students shared their personal matters as a part of classroom participation in Nepal.

In the U.S. classroom, class participation was assumed as an ethical obligation for both foreign and native students. It was a surprise for me to notice that speaking in the class means participating—correct or incorrect comments were expected!

Tomorrow, in part two of this article, the author offers some guidance to faculty teaching in a multicultural classroom.

Krishna Bista is an international graduate student from Nepal at Arkansas State University. His e-mail is Krishna.Bista@smail.astate.edu

References
Armstrong, P. (2007, July). Cultures of silence: Giving voice to marginalized communities. Paper presented at the meeting of the Standing Conference on University Research and Teaching in the Education of Adults, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Brookfield, S. (2006). The Skillful Teacher: On Techniques, Trust, and Tesponsiveness in the
Classroom (2nd edition), Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Jaworski, A. (2005). Introduction: Silence in institutional and intercultural contexts. Multilingua, 24, 1–6.

Harumi, S. (2010). Classroom Silence: Voices from Japanese EFL Learners. English Language
Teaching Journal, 65 (1), 1-10.

Liu, J. (2001). Asian students’ classroom communication patterns in U.S. universities: An emic
perspective. Westport, Conn: Ablex Publishing House.

Meyer, K. R. (2009, November). Student classroom participation: Exploring student definitions
of, motivations for, and recommendations regarding participation. Paper presented at the meeting of the National Communication Association, Chicago, IL.

Meyer, K. R., & Hunt, S. K. (2004, April). Rethinking evaluation strategies for student participation. Paper presented at the meeting of the Central States Communication Association, Cleveland, OH.

Nakane, I. (2005). Negotiating Silence and Speech in the Classroom. Multilingua, 24, 75-100.
Petress, K. (2001). The Ethics of Student Classroom Silence. Journal of Instructional
Psychology, 28, 104-107.

Ping, W. (2010). A Case Study of an In-class Silent Postgraduate Chinese Student in London
Metropolitan University: A Journey of Learning. TESOL Journal, 2, 207-214.

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

Tatar, S. (2008). Classroom Participation by International Students: The Case of Turkish
Graduate Students. Journal of Studies in International Education, 12, 204-221.

Research supports theories that separate metacognition into two major components: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Knowledge of cognition “describes an individual’s awareness of cognition at three different levels: declarative (knowing about things), procedural (knowing about how to do things), and conditional (knowing why and when to do things).” (Cooper and Sandi-Urena, p. 240) Regulation of cognition relates to how learners control their learning. Relevant regulatory activities include planning, monitoring, and evaluating.

Metacognition has been studied in students from grade school through college, and it has produced a number of interesting and important findings. Schraw and Dennison report that “recent research indicates that metacognitively aware learners are more strategic and perform better than unaware learners.” (p. 460) When learners use regulatory metacognitive skills, they do better at paying attention, they use learning strategies more effectively, and they are more aware of when they are not comprehending something they are trying to learn. Surprisingly, the research has also shown that metacognitive awareness is not a function of intellectual ability. And the research has shown that metacognitive skills are not domain specific. They are remarkably consistent across different fields.

Two of the references below (Cooper and Sandi-Urena and Schraw and Dennison) report on the development of instruments that can be used to assess a learner’s level of metacognitive awareness. The Schraw and Dennison instrument, the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, includes 52 items, including “I am good at organizing information,” “I summarize what I’ve learned after I’ve finished,” “I am a good judge of how well I understand something,” and “I change strategies when I fail to understand.”

The Cooper and Sandi-Urena instrument, the Metacognitive Activities Inventory (MCAI), was “designed specifically to assess students’ metacognitive skillfulness during chemistry problem solving.” (p. 240) It contains 27 items, including “Once a result is obtained, I check to see that it agrees with what I expected,” “I spend little time on problems I am not sure I can solve,” “I try to double-check everything: my understanding of the problem, calculations, units, etc.,” and “I attempt to break down the problem to find the starting point.”

As these examples illustrate, even though the MCAI was developed for use in chemistry, its items are relevant to many kinds of problem solving. In both cases, students respond via a Likert scale that asks them to rate how characteristic the responses are of them. Each of these instruments was carefully developed, and the articles referenced include empirical results verifying both their reliability and validity.

The research makes clear that metacognitive skills can be developed and that, certainly, an instructor could use either of these instruments to help accomplish that goal. Having students complete an instrument like this helps instructors by providing data on how metacognitively aware a given group of students might be and by identifying students who might not have a well-developed set of metacognitive skills.

Administering an instrument like this can be a learning experience for the student who completes it. It forces reflection—what do I do when I confront a problem?—and it describes actions a student might not know about or do regularly. Neither of these instruments is time consuming to complete, and both were developed for use by faculty in classrooms. Having students complete either of these instruments after an exam when they did not do as well they (or their teacher) wanted is an effective way to provide feedback, with the potential to improve subsequent performance.

References:
Cooper, M. M., and Sandi-Urena, S. (2009). Design and validation of an instrument to assess metacognitive skillfulness in chemistry problem solving. Journal of Chemical Education 86 (2), 240-245.

Schraw, G. (1998). Promoting general metacognitive awareness. Instructional Science, 26, 113-125.
Schraw, G. and Dennison, R. S. (1994). Assessing metacognitive awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 19, 460-475.

Excerpted from Assessing and Developing Metacognitive Skills, The Teaching Professor, 23.10 (2009): 3, 6.

If you take a look around most college campuses these days you see students communicating on several types of mobile devices. These students are referred to as Generation Y or the Millennial Generation. This group is generally known for its use and familiarity with communications, media and digital technologies. (Generation Y, 2006) Today’s students do not wait to receive information – they want it instantly and feel they are entitled to receiving it instantly because they grew up with the latest, greatest technologies always close at hand.

Statistics show that by December of 2011 one in two Americans will have a Smartphone. (Entner, 2010) This along with the market saturation of cell phones and mobile devices in this “must have” society justifies our need to incorporate these technologies in education. Companies such as Apple have huge media events when they are launching a new product. The anticipation and desire to have these items is immeasurable. Apple is so successful with its launches that people will pre-order the latest “must have” devices.

It’s 10 pm, do you know where your students are?
Instructors need to pay attention to the needs of their students. They need to be aware that students are not stationary beings who study in their dorm rooms at night. Faculty need to consider that their students may be at the movies, or out to dinner, and decide to check their online course for assignments, announcements, or an e-mailed response to one of their questions from their instructor.

In addition, it is important for educators to recognize that today’s students not only prefer the Internet over a traditional “bricks and mortar” library – but are adept at accessing the information they want on their mobile devices. I use the term “devices” intentionally because they are not only using one device at a time. There are occasions where they might be using their laptop, Smartphone, iPad, and iPod at the same time and for different reasons.

We need to remember that learning can take place in various shapes, sizes, and forms. Therefore, we need to think outside the box and learn to develop new ways to deliver our course content and to communicate with our students. Be open to new ideas and technologies — do not become stagnant in your approach to teaching and learning!

If you are not comfortable with the new technologies, ask for help. Partner with a colleague that is tech savvy and one that knows how to use all the gadgets and social networks. Jump outside your comfort zone and explore the possibilities of mobile learning and discover new ways to communicate with your students. Have fun and be creative – your students will appreciate the effort.

Eileen Narozny is an instructional designer at the University of Central Florida.

References
MLearning. (2009, July). Retrieved May 10, 2010, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLearning

Generation Y. (2006, September). Retrieved May 10, 2010, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Y

Entner, R. (2010, March 26). nielsenwire. Retrieved May 28, 2010, from nielsenwire: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/smartphones-to-overtake-feature-phones-in-u-s-by-2011/

Learning Styles: Theory and research confirm that students have preferred learning styles that can enhance their learning effectiveness. There are many instruments available to measure students’ learning styles from related literature. The Learning Style Survey developed by Diablo Valley College is a popular online instrument used for determining students’ learning styles, and won an award for “Best Use of Technology in Education for 1999.”

This survey provides immediate results on students’ learning style preferences, which I then use to gauge the amount and types of multimedia to include in PPT lectures. U.S. research suggest that typically, 30 percent of students prefer learning visually (e.g., images, charts, maps, videos, and notes), 34 percent auditorily (e.g., lecture tapes, sound bites, background music, and discussion) and 36 percent kinesthetically/tactilely (e.g., keyboarding quiz answers or comments, and manipulating learning material).

Using these findings as a multimedia gauge for a 30-slide PPT lecture, roughly 30 percent of the slides (9) will contain graphics, 34 percent (10 slides) audio or sound, and 36 percent (11 slides) interactive content (keyboarding, quiz in PPT, animations, and links to possible simulated exercises). I also include any detailed notes within the PPT “Click to Add Notes” feature for the particular slide, so students have all the information on the topic at hand. I would hasten to add that the latter is not absolute and other modalities can be used to present online course content.

Cultural/International Backgrounds: In addition to knowing students’ learning style preferences, I also ask my online students to share a little about themselves including their cultural/international backgrounds. In this way, the online learning community (students and instructor) can have a shared understanding and appreciation of its diversity. Using this information, I can choose graphics, audio, and interactive content that will accommodate for their cultural/international backgrounds in making learning more interesting and stimulating for students. For example, I would not place a black border or rim around pictures of persons as this symbolizes death for Chinese students. The color red can have both negative and positive meanings culturally so I use it sparingly.

Further, while Americans hold their dogs and cats in high esteem, other cultures do not. As such, I am culturally sensitive when using animal graphics. If I have Caribbean students, their infamous reggae, calypso, or steelpan music is included in the PPT audio. In addition, combat scenes are quite acceptable to U.S. students, who are reminded daily of the different wars being fought by U.S. troops around the globe. However, such scenes may appear abrasive to other international students, so I choose course content that will be generally acceptable to all students.

In being sensitive to online students’ learning style preferences and cultural/international backgrounds, I think we can enhance our online PPT lectures in making them easier for students to relate to and learn from effectively.

Debra Ferdinand, PhD, is a recent consulting distance education facilitator with Cipriani College of Labour and Co-operative Studies, Trinidad.

References:
Diablo Valley College (1999). A learning style survey for college. Retrieved August 19, 2010 from http://www.metamath.com/multiple/multiple_choice_questions.html.

Miller, S. C. (2007). Learning styles. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.4faculty.org/includes/digdeeper/lesson4/learningstyles.htm.

Carlson-Pickering, J. (1999, November). MI & technology: A winning combination. Retrieved August 19, 2010, from http://www.ri.net/RITTI_Fellows/Carlson-Pickering/MI_Tech.htm#Learning%20and%20Our%20Emotions.

The editorial proceeds with descriptions of her approaches to both teaching and assessment. She concludes, “[B]ased on my personal experience, I am convinced that Earth system science instructors need to move away from designing courses driven mostly by content, delivered through lectures and punctuated by objective tests towards courses centered on specific learning outcomes, based on the principles of learning, and guided by what students bring to the class-room [sic].” (p. 209)

Convincing testimony, if you also believe in learner-centered approaches; probably unconvincing if you don’t. Either way, statements based on personal experience raise interesting questions. What can teachers learn from experience? Most of us, after looking at our own teaching, would say a lot.

This geography professor believes in what she has learned. But she didn’t start out already having had a conversion experience. Her change of heart started with an activity, a kind of Earth Summit in which students presented on an environmental topic relevant to a particular country. “I noticed how ALL my students became much more engaged in the class, performing extensive research on topics of relevance to their selected country, and displaying originality in their research approach and presentations.” (p. 208) That success led to more “participatory” approaches and finally to conclusions about the common elements shared by all these approaches.

She is also honest about what the approach involves. “The learner-centered way of teaching is demanding and time consuming. It requires more planning than a conventional way of delivering material and the design and delivery need particular attention.” (p. 209) Would you opt for something harder and more work if you didn’t have pretty good evidence that justified the extra effort?

I’d say that chances are good that what the professor learned from experience has some validity. But there’s another part to the question of what can be learned from experience. What can teachers learn from each other’s experiences? Personal experience has fallen out of favor in most pedagogical periodicals. For a long time faculty reported on instructional innovations with the passion of the newly converted. “This is the greatest thing that has happened to my teaching in decades.” “It worked so well and my students liked it so much.” That’s not scholarship, not reflective, not analytical, and hence not very credible.

But I still think there should be a place in the pedagogical literature for thoughtful accounts of experiences that articulate what a teacher has learned. Those accounts can be tested against our own experiences and those of others. They can be benchmarked against educational theory and research. Accounts in which fellow teachers reflect thoughtfully and critically about a set of classroom experiences resonate with faculty. They can make teachers think and question, and sometimes even motivate teachers to take action.

Reference: Gautier, C. (2006). A personal experience of designing earth system science instruction based on learner-centered environment paradigm. Journal of Geoscience Education, 54 (3), 208-209.

Excerpted from Experience: Learning From It, The Teaching Professor, June/July 2009.

He’s still with it enough to know that his thinking is flawed, that he makes mistakes and can’t do things he’s been able to effortlessly for years. I try to imagine how he must feel. My mind still works, so I only get glimpses. When I got home I picked up a knitting project I hadn’t worked on for a month. It’s a big, huge thing I’ve been working on since shortly after Christmas. But I couldn’t remember which way the yarn-overs went. I tried to figure it out from the pattern, but the more I thought about it the more confused I got and the more wrong yarn-overs I made. Even this minor mental confusion was totally frustrating. No wonder Dad is stressed, frightened, and depressed.

I tell myself that Dad is old. His mind has been a good and reliable guide for many years. What’s happening to him now should not be a surprise. That helps in my head but not in my heart.

But I did come home with a renewed appreciation for learning—what I have learned and use regularly and what I can still learn. The capacity to learn and to use what we’ve learned is one of those things that makes life worth living. When the mind delivers what we need or helps us understand something new, we take it for granted, unable to imagine its absence. Like so much else in life, learning is a gift to be used and enjoyed. But it is also one of those gifts that sometimes wears out.

Among a number of conditions they identify as being relevant to intellectual development, they suggest particular kinds of problems for students to solve. Their list (summarized below) offers ideas relevant in any course where students solve problems.

Predicting outcomes—“Describe physical demonstrations or experiments and have students predict the outcomes and then describe (or if possible, carry out) the demonstrations or experiments and show the actual outcomes.” (p. 281) It is beneficial when students make incorrect predictions. If they are directly confronted with wrong mental pictures, they will be very motivated to make corrections and learn the right perspective on the problem.

Interpreting and modeling physical phenomena—In these problems, students are provided with data from a real or a hypothetical experiment, and then they are asked to use course concepts to explain the results.

Generating ideas and brainstorming—The idea here is to use open-ended exercises to disconnect students from their belief that every problem has one right answer. For example, a teacher might present students with a product design and have them brainstorm as many possible flaws and failures as they can think of. No answer is considered wrong during the brainstorming process.

Identifying problems and troubleshooting—Describe a device (such as a process or system) that is not working effectively, and ask students to speculate on the possible causes of the problem. They might also be asked to devise experimental tests that would confirm or refute their suppositions.

Formulating procedures for solving complex problems—In this situation, students are given “incompletely specified problems.” (p. 282) They start by itemizing what they know. Next they list what they need to know, and finally students explore how they will determine those unknowns. For example, would they look up the unknowns? Calculate them? Measure them? Estimate them from empirical correlations? Use rules of thumb?

Formulating problems—Rather than always giving students the problems, turn the tables. Have students look at previous course content from a designated time period (for example, one week, three weeks) and make up the problems that they then also solve. Challenge students (maybe by giving more credit) to come up with problems that require complex analysis, critical examination, or creative thinking.

Making judgments and decisions and justifying them— “Call on students to make and support judgments on ambiguous or controversial matters.” (p. 282) The point here is not the conclusion per se but the quality of the evidence and reasoning mustered to support their position. In order to do this, students must be taught to evaluate evidence in terms of its reliability and validity.

“Including a variety of problem types in assignments serves an important purpose besides promoting intellectual growth and adoption of a deep approach to learning. Some students are gifted in ways that may not show up on straightforward homework problems. When they are assigned problems that call for different skills, they sometimes discover talents they may not have known they possessed. The effect of this discovery on their self-confidence and subsequent performance levels—even on more conventional problems—can be quite dramatic.” (p. 282)

Reference: Felder, R. M. and Brent, R. (2004). The intellectual development of science and engineering students. Part 2: Teaching to promote growth. Journal of Engineering Education, October, 279–291.

And yet, not only is it difficult and time-consuming to accurately identify and address the individual learning styles of an entire class, but there’s now a question of whether it’s really necessary.

In the recent online seminar Learning Styles: Fact and Folklore for eLearning, Les Howles, a senior e-learning consultant at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, and Allan Jeong, an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University, talked about the many misconceptions regarding learning styles. The two concluded that “based on several decades of empirical evidence, matching learning activities/strategies with specific learning styles does not often result in improved learning.”

That’s not to say that students don’t have different learning styles, preferences or traits, but when designing the components of an e-learning course, it’s more important to select a modality that is most suitable for the content and supports the learning goals, Howles says. Most students are multimodal and are able to learn in a variety of formats.

Active vs. Reflective Learners

While downplaying some of the intuitive appeal of learning styles, one area where Jeong has seen marked differences is in how active and reflective learners engage in online discussions. In analyzing message exchanges, he found that reflective learners produced significantly more responses than exchanges between active learners.

By requiring students to post a designated number of messages and to do so using one of four message tags, Jeong is able to use discussion boards in a way that plays to the strengths and preferences of both active and reflective learners. The tags also make it easy for instructors to assess discussion board participation and performance. The four post tags are:

1. ARG – a message that presents an argument.
2. EXPL – a reply/message that explains, supports or clarifies an argument.
3. BUT – a reply/message that questions or challenges a previous argument or challenge.
4. EVID – a reply/message that provides evidence to establish the validity of an argument or challenge.

Advice for Online Course Designers

Howles and Jeong offered the following advice for instructional designers:

• Focus most on good instructional message design.
• Select instructional methods and modalities appropriate for the content.
• Focus on developing schemas not just communicating content.
• Focus on what students do in the learning task.
• Don’t discard learning styles entirely, but also focus on a variety of other individual learner differences such as prior knowledge and motivation.
• Read learning styles research (abstracts).

Tom C. Roberts, assistant dean for recruitment and leadership development in the College of Engineering at Kansas State University, says that perhaps senior faculty members should teach more introductory courses because the generational differences between the current young faculty members and first-year students are greater than those between the senior faculty members and first-year students. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Roberts bases this assertion on generations theory, particularly the work of Strauss and Howe, which proposes a 90-year cycle in which societal changes affect the general characteristics of each generation. The theory proposes a succession of four types of generations, each of which lasts 17 to 23 years: idealist, reactive, civic, and adaptive.

The current idealist generation (indulged as children, come of age as narcissistic young crusaders, cultivate principle as moralistic mid-lifers, and emerge as wise elders) is the Baby-Boom generation (people born between 1943 and 1960). Boomers went to college in the ’60s and ’70s and generally sought an approach to learning that gave them the freedom to problem solve in a less restrictive manner than what their professors offered.

Generation X, the current reactive generation (grow up under-protected, alienated young adults, mellow into pragmatic mid-life leaders) take a random approach to problem solving and are more skeptical than Boomers.

The Millennials, the current civic generation (grow up protected, come of age as heroic young team workers, demonstrate hubris as energetic mid-lifers, and emerge as powerful elders), are generally more sequential thinkers. They grew up with a lot more structure than Xers and generally need more guidance in their classes.

“When you’ve got Boomers and Xers who wanted freedom and didn’t want all that control suddenly teaching students who need more control, this starts to set up conflict within the classroom which is almost the reverse of the kind of conflict we had in the ’60s and ’70s,” Roberts says.

The Boomers’ more formal approach to teaching (relative to Xers) and experience teaching a variety of students might make them better suited to teaching Millennials, Roberts says. Having senior faculty members (Boomers) teach introductory courses and junior faculty members (Xers) teach capstone courses could help Millennials more readily adapt to a new learning environment and also help develop Xers as teachers more quickly “by giving them the opportunity to learn some things they didn’t pick up because of their random approach to learning,” Roberts says.

Convincing faculty that reversing teaching assignments is in the best interest of the department can be difficult, and department chairs and heads should not force such a change, Roberts says. The department needs to carefully consider the issue, and, in some cases, members need to be convinced. Roberts and his colleague, John O. Mingle, have worked with departments on this issue for the past four years in a variety of venues, using a three-step process:

• Educate the faculty members about generational differences. “We get some defensive behavior, but when we have the right mix of people and a good facilitator, we can turn that into some very thoughtful discussion,” Roberts says.
• Relate the generational differences to the teaching that occurs in the department’s courses.
• Look at the curriculum and student development throughout the curriculum in light of the findings in the first two steps. This may involve changing teaching assignments or the timing in which certain things are taught.

Because generations theory deals in general characteristics of generation, it is important to remember that people do not fit neatly into categories. “You have to be careful about putting people in boxes, but the trends are there. They are very distinctive over time and over the general social context. But as always, we have to pay attention to individual students. That never goes away, but our general approach might change,” Roberts says.

Excerpted from Rethinking Teaching Assignments: Should Senior Faculty Teach More Introductory Courses? Academic Leader, April 2005.

The author acknowledges that active learning is a movement and describes how faculty will experience it—through workshops that address how to incorporate writing and discussion in large classes. “You’ll also be exposed to vast numbers of books and articles promoting active learning, including an international journal with the straightforward title of Active Learning in Higher Education. The movement has thus acquired academic and professional legitimacy.” (p. 24)

Recognizing the origins of active learning in theories of education like that proposed by Dewey, the author notes, “There are some good ideas among the reams of articles and books about active learning.” (p. 26). But he contends active learning is a smoke screen designed to cover deeper problems in higher education—like class size, where if active learning principles are used, they can make the large class seem smaller and therefore make large classes more likely.

The logic is convoluted, and the case supporting a connection between increasing class sizes and the interest in active learning rests more on correlation than causation. It is not substantiated with evidence. Even more distressing is the author’s ignorance of the research that justifies approaches that engage students in learning. The author makes one reference (two studies) and then objects to educational jargon. Would you presume to read a research journal in physics, sociology—name a discipline—and then decry the author’s use of language?

I know; subscribers to a newsletter like this don’t need to be persuaded. But we do need to be reminded that much of what we believe and take for granted is still up for grabs in other sectors of the academy. Reading an article like this behooves and prepares us. You never know when you might be called upon to answer objections like these.

Reference: Mattson, K. (2005, January–February). Why “active learning” can be perilous to the profession. Academe, 23–26.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, March 2006.

With research happening in so many different places on the disciplinary map, the collected body of work looks diffuse and fragmented. Nonetheless, “there is general acceptance that the manner in which individuals choose to or are inclined to approach a learning situation has impact on performance and achievement of learning outcomes.” (p. 420)

About terminology there is wide disagreement. “The terms ‘learning style’, ‘cognitive style’ and ‘learning strategy’ are. . .frequently used imprecisely in theoretical and empirical accounts of the topic.” (p. 420) And that imprecision is reflected at the practitioner level as well where, for example, learning style and cognitive style are often used interchangeable. Some experts also do not make a distinction between them but when distinctions are made, they typically follow these lines.

Cognitive style reflects “an individual’s typical or habitual mode of problem solving, thinking, perceiving and remembering.” (p. 420). Comparatively, learning style reflects “a concern with the application of cognitive style in a learning situation.” (pp. 420-421).

The article referenced below lists, describes, and discusses 23 different instruments. The article’s purpose is not evaluation in the sense of trying to identify the best or ideal measure but to use description and comparison to help researchers and practitioners make better decisions about which measures to use when.

The author references and describes an onion metaphor as a way of organizing how the various measures get at the different constructs considered part of learning and cognitive style. At the outer level, meaning they are most observable, at the same time they are most susceptible to influence, therefore making them the least stable measures are instruments that rate student’s “instructional preference” or their “preferred choice of learning environment.” (p. 423) Next are instruments that measure how much social interaction students prefer during learning. The third and most stable layer of instruments seek to measure “information processing style.” The well-known Kolb instrument falls into this category. And finally are innermost measures of “cognitive personality style” like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator.

How students go about learning, the approaches they use and the results they net is such an important part of tailoring teaching effectiveness to meet learning needs. It is also an area that illustrates how nascent the scholarship of integration continues to be. Nonetheless, as an article that brings together, organizes, and characterizes the measurement instruments used both in research and practice, it makes a valuable contribution and is definitely a resource worth having in one’s file.

Reference: Cassidy, S. (2004). Learning styles: An overview of theories, models, and measures. Educational Psychology, 24 (4), 419-444.

Excerpted from An Update on Learning Styles/Cognitive Styles Research, The Teaching Professor, Jan. 2005.

Recently, we were asked to share our meaning of experiential education with an audience of educators. We shared this statement: “Most of life’s great lessons are learned through experience. As educators we have the power to frame and facilitate these experiences for our students to grow, flourish, and reach their full potential.” Part of this statement echoes McLaren, yet other words and concepts from our own experience and learning are also present. Cautiously, we are aware that as we embrace experiential education we must not allow the idea of an educational experience to be dichotomized into the ironic and simplistic mantra that students “learn by doing;” as if any “doing” can be divorced from a cognitive thought processes. John Dewey ² warned us of this as he noted there must be two sides to learning: the psychological and the sociological.

Experiential education in theory and practice must embrace both sides of learning, including the cognitive and affective domains as well as the social and physical domains. We believe that students can become deeply engaged in their own learning processes through this holistic approach.

To design learning experiences with an experiential approach calls for an application of John Dewey’s ideas ³ of emphasizing the process of education and development by using one’s experiences as the context for any content. Further, he believed that facilitated reflection on those experiences provided the opportunity for growth and transformative learning to occur. The key for Dewey and for any teaching, presumably, is that an individual transfers her/his learning from one experience into the next.

From our experiences of teaching, learning, and working together for more than a decade in traditional classrooms, gorged white-water wilds, forested mountains and the aired sandstone deserts of the southwest we have forged our own ECHO model ⁴ of experiential education based on an adaptation of Kolb’s “Experiential Learning Cycle.” ⁵

Ultimately, the real value of any learning experience, be it a classroom lesson or wilderness expedition, comes after the actual experience when the student is able to hear and own her/his own learning and apply it to a new situation. This is an echo: when a professor’s voice or interactive lesson or shared experience returns to serve as a navigation tool for the road ahead.

References:
(1) Singh, A. (2006). The education of a radical in UCLA Today Writer. Vol. 26. No.12 Retrieved April 10, 2008, from http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/pages/mclaren/
(2) Dewey, J. (1897). My Pedagogic Creed in The School Journal, Volume LIV, Number 3 (January 16, 1897), pages 77-80.
(3) Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York: Simon & Schuster.
(4) La Prad, J., Mink, A. & O’Steen, B. (2008). Explore, Create, Harvest, Own: An Experiential Approach to Professional Development in The Confluence Proceedings, Adams, L. and Galloway, S., (Eds.). Outdoors New Zealand: Wellington, New Zealand.
(5) Kolb, D. A., (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Jim La Prad, an associate professor at Western Illinois University, was named the 2008 National Educator of the Year by the National Society for Experiential Education (NSEE). Andy Mink is Director of Outreach and Education for the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia, and the 2003 NSEE National Educator of the Year.

To create more effective learning environments, and minimize forgetting, some faculty are turning to Situation-based Learning Design (SBLD), which aligns learning context with performance context.

“SBLD begins with the magic question: What do we want our learners to be able to do, and in what situations do we want our learners to do those things,” says Will Thalheimer, president of Work-Learning Research. “It’s based on a fairly simple concept but can have profound implications.”

In the recent online seminar, Transforming Your Online Class with Situation-Based Learning, Thalheimer discusses the theory behind situation-based learning and how it can be used to provide deeper more meaningful learning and retention.

Using the Situation-Evaluation-Decision-Action (SEDA) model to evaluate instructional design, Thalheimer talks about the importance of giving students the opportunities to evaluate, make decisions and act on the problem or situation presented to them within relevant contexts and without artificial hints or supports. For example, when educators “chapterize concepts”, and don’t provide comprehensive knowledge checks or cumulative exams, they are not providing the student with proper evaluation opportunities to retrieve knowledge in a way they will be asked to retrieve it in the real world.

Whether you’re teaching in the classroom or online, Thalheimer provides the following tips for incorporating SBLD and creating performance contexts in your courses.

• Provide real-world examples
• Assign project work to happen in the targeted situations
• Provide scenario-based questions
• Have exercises related to targeted situations
• Use relevant case studies
• Provide simulations

The benefits, he says, includes more engaged learning, better long-term memory and recall, and improved results.

The teaching method was effective in that most of her students did well on their assessments, but she knew their ability to analyze real-world scenarios wasn’t what it needed to be, especially given the rapidly changing technology landscape in which they’ll be working. When Microsoft began testing students on their ability to apply their knowledge in unfamiliar situations, Saulsberry knew she needed a more effective teaching strategy. The answer came in the form of concept maps; diagrams that show the relationship between concepts.

In the Jan. 28th online seminar, Using Concept Maps to Assess Online and Traditional Classes, Saulsberry provided examples of concepts map assignments from her classes, and showed how the maps are used to improve and demonstrate students’ understanding of course material.

“Assessing students’ critical thinking skills and knowledge transfer is the strong point of concept maps,” she says. “By developing assignments which have students develop a concept map to solve a specific problem, I have been able to assess this well enough that the assignments and concept maps the students created in response are included in the college’s institutional assessment of critical thinking.”

Typically arranged in a hierarchical manner, with concept boxes connected by lines and “linking phrases” that explain the relationship (e.g. “results in” or “contributes to”) concept maps are particularly effective with visual learners. Saulsberry also found that, after a few practice maps, her students prefer concept maps to other forms of assessment, and that the maps are equally effective with both her online and classroom-based students.

Basic concept mapping can be done with a pen and paper, a whiteboard and sticky notes, or PowerPoint, but as you incorporate concept mapping into your daily instruction, it’s best to take advantage of the concept mapping software that’s available. Saulsberry recommends Cmap, which is free and has versions for Windows, Mac and Linux, and in last week’s seminar she provided detailed instructions on how to install and use the software. To download the Cmap software, visit http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/

Motley, who teaches faculty and staff how to develop online content for hybrid courses, says that one of the biggest challenges of developing a hybrid course is deciding which materials and activities to deliver online and which to deliver face to face. “It’s something that each instructor must decide for him- or herself, working with an instructional designer or someone on campus who can help them think about the consequences of putting something online,” Motley says.

Motley offers the following advice for creating a hybrid course:

1. Consider how much time you have to create the online portion of the course, including how long it will take for you to learn how. 
2. Consider the students’ needs and skills. Will working online be an obstacle for some students?
3. Use a course management system if possible. A course management system has the tools to make the online course content interactive. If your institution does not have a user license for a course management system, consider one of the several free, open-source course management systems that are currently available.
4. Reuse materials. Creating online education materials can be time consuming. In addition to reusing content-related materials, whenever possible, reuse messages or announcements.
5. Manage your time. Teaching a hybrid course means you will be online more than you normally would. Plan accordingly.
6. Provide an in-class orientation to the online portion of the course. This is a luxury that is often not available to instructors teaching totally online courses. Still, you should provide in the syllabus all the information students will need to know about working online. 
7. Use class time for lectures. This can help reduce the time it takes to develop online materials, because posting lectures online is often the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of creating hybrid courses, Motley says.
8. Encourage online interaction. The online portion of the course can be an extension of what occurs in the classroom. Students can work in groups to build on the interaction begun in the classroom. Motley recommends tying interaction to grades.
9. Remember that just because students are working in two environments and are free from some time constraints does not mean that students should be expected to do twice the amount of work as in a comparable face-to-face class.

From Online Classroom, March 2007.

Legacy uses active learning techniques such as group inquiry, online field trips, asynchronous debate, and Web quests in her online courses — in organizational leadership and human relations, research and technology, and online learning — to prepare students for the types of learning situations they will encounter on the job and to reflect the changes in the ways students prefer to learn. “If we want our students to be successful in the workplace, we’ve got to model what we want them to be like,” Legacy says. “If the ultimate goal for us is to prepare people to learn, unlearn, and relearn the rest of their lives, they have to start having fun, and we need to make them accountable. And the only way we’re going to give them that opportunity is to not be so rigid with our instructions.”

In addition, Legacy says, today’s students are less interested in lectures and prefer more variety in the instructional methods used in a course. “They love to be active participants in the learning process, and the research says also that students learn better from other students than they do from teachers,” Legacy says.

Because of the changes in students’ preferred styles of learning, Legacy recommends that instructors change instructional strategies every 15 to 18 minutes, whether the course is on campus or online.

Legacy’s courses are set up as modules on a Wednesday to Wednesday schedule rather than Sunday to Sunday to give students more time on the weekends to complete their work. Each module consists of 15-minute increments. For example, students may read for 15 minutes, then spend 15 minutes in a group activity, followed by 15 minutes in the discussion forum. (A three-credit course typically requires students to put in approximately nine hours a week.)

The first step in creating an active learning environment online is to get students to relate what is going on in the course to their lives, which helps them problem solve and think critically, two skills that are essential in the workplace.

This concept is played out in a variety of ways in Legacy’s courses. She begins each course with a pre-assessment of students’ skills and abilities by taking all the course’s learning outcomes and having each student rate himself or herself on those outcomes. Legacy also does a personality assessment, and based on those two assessments, she puts students in groups so that each group has a cross section of skill levels and personality traits.

From the beginning of each course, each student’s work is visible online to others in the course through an e-portfolio. Students also critique each others’ work using a set of rubrics. This helps students be more creative in their work, and it also gives them ideas for how to approach their own projects. “It’s all about students designing, implementing, and evaluating their own work using other people’s work as resources,” Legacy says.

Discussing the deliverables “teaches them that there is always a reflection in work.” It gives students a chance to analyze what worked and what didn’t.

The goal of Legacy’s courses is to relate the material to real-world situations, which motivates students to learn by emphasizing the things they will need to know when they are in a particular career. It also gets students to relate the material to their own lives and to seek other people’s perspectives.

For example, Legacy might include an “expert witness” in a course, someone who works in a field that is relevant to the course. If it’s a law class, the expert witness might be an attorney. Legacy will have the students read a relevant chapter and follow up by asking the expert witness how the material relates to the real world or how his or her experiences compare to what the students read in the textbook.

One of the keys to getting students to take an active role in their own learning and their peers is a set of clear rubrics. For group projects, the rubrics list all the things students need to accomplish, and for each group project students assess each others’ participation.

The rubrics remove the subjectivity of the grading process and give students the responsibility of selecting the grade they want. For example, in threaded discussions, students know that in order to get a C, they must respond with information that comes from the textbook. To get a B, they must use information from the textbook and another resource. To get an A, they must respond with information from the textbook and two other resources.

Like all learning situations, the success of active learning techniques depends largely on the dedication and skills of the individuals in the course. Legacy teaches at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Legacy’s graduate students, who are generally in the business world and understand the value of active learning because it closely resembles how they conduct themselves at work, are more inclined than her undergraduates to “dive into” active learning. However, the undergraduates generally have less fear of the technology.

Contact Jane Legacy at j.legacy@snhu.edu.