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Addressing The Problem: Active Learning

00:00:16.15 I think active learning occurs
00:00:19.08 anytime a student goes beyond the passive listening and note-taking mode,
00:00:26.09 and starts to question things
00:00:29.21 and ruminate on things in their own mind.
00:00:33.27 Sometimes it goes beyond that to speaking with other people.
00:00:37.13 Active learning is a huge umbrella, which it absolutely should be,
00:00:40.28 but it covers a lot of different activities
00:00:43.12 that include things done in class
00:00:46.14 and include things done out of class,
00:00:47.28 that, in my interpretation, include things done active...
00:00:51.24 mechanically and physically,
00:00:53.28 and active with a partner or with groups,
00:00:56.06 and include things that are actively done by oneself,
00:00:58.23 and quietly actually.
00:01:00.13 There's active learning that's done that way.
00:01:02.06 And when you think about active learning that way,
00:01:04.06 you can serve a lot of different students who are able to learn and gain knowledge
00:01:07.26 in a lot of different ways.
00:01:09.17 For me, active learning is any time the instructor
00:01:12.01 stops talking and expects students
00:01:14.18 to do something that requires them to think.
00:01:17.23 So, I always tell my students that we can all think.
00:01:21.28 I've just been thinking longer than you have
00:01:24.19 about this kind of stuff,
00:01:25.29 but you can easily come up with these ideas
00:01:28.12 if you all sit down and think about it.
00:01:30.13 As a teacher, it's just a lot more interesting
00:01:33.02 when you have these...
00:01:35.04 this sort of uncertainty that you throw out,
00:01:36.26 when people are really thinking and they're not passive.
00:01:40.02 Because you see them start to work,
00:01:42.29 and to think, and to work together.
00:01:46.01 For me, active learning is any type of strategy
00:01:49.06 that you can use to engage students,
00:01:52.11 and to meet them where they are,
00:01:53.29 and to bring them along.
00:01:55.21 It's, I guess, creating a dialogue rather than a monologue
00:01:59.17 of the professor standing up and giving a lecture,
00:02:02.02 where, you know, students really feel free to contribute their own ideas in the class.
00:02:09.16 In the end, because engagement is there
00:02:12.08 -- if it's true active learning and engagement is there --
00:02:13.25 the pace of learning actually goes much faster,
00:02:15.16 because students are assimilating that knowledge and processing it
00:02:18.08 and putting it in place in their brains
00:02:20.09 in ways that are probably much more effective
00:02:22.14 and much more concrete than in other methods.
00:02:29.02 When you're thinking about integrating active learning,
00:02:31.14 one of the important things to consider is,
00:02:33.05 what is it that I really want students to leave this course being able to do?
00:02:37.19 When they walk out the door,
00:02:39.17 and I don't see them again for five years,
00:02:42.01 what do I want to ask them to do or to say or to address
00:02:47.02 that I really think it's important for them to still know?
00:02:49.24 And those are the things to focus on in your classrooms,
00:02:53.02 and those are the things to build active learning experiences around.
00:02:56.16 And so, I think that's more the role that I need to take in the classroom,
00:03:01.10 is to define these core concepts that they...
00:03:04.10 that they need to understand.
00:03:07.05 And so, when you're setting learning objectives for your course,
00:03:10.16 we urge people to aim higher.
00:03:13.13 We want students to be able to analyze data.
00:03:16.22 We want students to be able to solve problems.
00:03:19.11 Not simply remember all of the steps in the Krebs cycle.
00:03:24.01 When our students go to upper division courses
00:03:27.03 and they see material that they may have seen briefly
00:03:31.05 in an active learning classroom,
00:03:32.28 they say, oh I feel so much better prepared
00:03:35.04 to look at this at a deeper level now.
00:03:37.29 And so, I think the role as the...
00:03:40.25 of the instructor is a facilitator of their synthesis
00:03:44.06 and their learning.
00:03:45.20 Anytime you want to communicate with somebody,
00:03:47.09 anytime you want to give...
00:03:48.29 get something from somebody,
00:03:50.17 you know, you have to give them incentive to give that to you.
00:03:53.15 What I want to get from my students
00:03:55.07 is their involvement and their investment in actually learning.
00:03:59.24 And the only way I can get them to give that to me is to give them what they want also.
00:04:04.13 And one of the things I think they want
00:04:06.21 is to feel like they are actually valued,
00:04:08.04 that they are not just coming in as empty vessels
00:04:10.15 and have to take, you know, what I give.
00:04:12.12 That they come in with experiences,
00:04:14.04 with some base of knowledge and some level of intellect,
00:04:17.25 and that they can actually contribute, you know,
00:04:20.18 to the process somehow.
00:04:21.22 What do they already know?
00:04:23.10 If they already know one of the learning objectives
00:04:25.11 that I have set out for the course,
00:04:26.26 I don't spend a lot of time teaching that.
00:04:28.16 Instead, I move on to something
00:04:30.27 that they're struggling with.
00:04:32.19 And I try to respond instructionally
00:04:34.14 to where my students are.
00:04:40.03 Some way, you have to get information
00:04:43.23 about what students have gained
00:04:46.20 or potentially not gained from the experience.
00:04:51.22 And I don't take their failure as being
00:04:56.05 their problem all the time.
00:04:57.20 I have to look at what I'm doing.
00:04:59.10 I do love when misconceptions come out,
00:05:01.20 because then when students learn off their own mistake,
00:05:03.29 they actually learn the thing right.
00:05:06.03 If I tell them, this is something you guys think,
00:05:08.09 but it's not correct, here's really how it goes,
00:05:11.26 they don't learn that.
00:05:13.09 For me, having that data about what they are understanding
00:05:17.24 and what they're still misunderstanding,
00:05:19.23 and then taking that next step to actually act on it.
00:05:22.17 I think that for me, that's what turns it into
00:05:25.06 a student-centered classroom.
00:05:26.21 So, collecting the assessment data,
00:05:28.23 the pre or post or both...
00:05:31.01 it's really great if you're able to.
00:05:33.10 And then, when something is not lining up in that assessment,
00:05:36.09 being able to... you know, first thing, in the next class, maybe,
00:05:39.09 actually directly addressing that.
00:05:41.13 So, there are ways to collect information.
00:05:42.28 It's not necessarily graded.
00:05:44.11 But you can get feedback,
00:05:46.00 and then you can adjust your plan.
00:05:47.11 You know, if the captain of the Titanic
00:05:49.08 had adjusted his plan along the way...
00:05:51.08 well, we wouldn't have that movie.
00:05:53.04 But the point being that sticking to the plan
00:05:55.17 is not necessarily the best idea
00:05:57.23 when you can collect data along the way.
00:06:00.09 So, assessment is something where we need to move away
00:06:03.05 from thinking about it only being about exams and giving grades
00:06:05.17 and moving it towards being
00:06:07.16 a critical tool for learning,
00:06:09.11 oftentimes the basis of active learning.
00:06:11.00 I have a very hard time even thinking of an active learning exercise to do
00:06:14.15 if I don't have the assessment in mind.
00:06:16.10 And more often than not, the active learning exercise
00:06:19.09 -- whatever it is that students are doing --
00:06:20.24 is actually itself a form of assessment.
00:06:22.23 And so, by doing that active learning exercise,
00:06:25.01 either through the observation of myself observing the students
00:06:28.25 or through something that the students are producing,
00:06:30.24 I'm gaining some form of assessment of the...
00:06:32.29 as to where those students are
00:06:34.29 and where they need to get to.
00:06:36.03 You can always have them answer a few questions,
00:06:38.13 write down what they learned.
00:06:40.26 There's a... like a... using an index card of what's clear and what's still confusing
00:06:46.00 at the end of a class.
00:06:47.17 So, simple assessments or more formal sort of exam-type assessments.
00:06:53.05 And that's the... one of the joys of active learning for me
00:06:55.28 is to find out more about what's happening
00:06:59.06 inside students' heads.
00:07:05.01 The kind of teaching that we're advocating
00:07:07.13 is really built around three points
00:07:09.15 to keep in mind if one is
00:07:12.09 planning a course, for example.
00:07:14.05 The first is defining the objectives.
00:07:16.11 What do you really want students to be able to do
00:07:19.02 at the end of this course?
00:07:22.22 And the second thing is,
00:07:24.26 how are you going to know if they reach those objectives?
00:07:27.12 So, you have to design or find
00:07:30.02 an appropriate assessment that will tell you
00:07:32.23 how well the students are doing.
00:07:34.20 And then the third thing is you have to decide,
00:07:36.22 well, how am I best going to use class time
00:07:38.26 so that students actually reach these objectives?
00:07:42.23 And an additional consideration
00:07:45.10 is that all these things must be aligned properly.
00:07:48.29 That is, you have to have...
00:07:51.01 what you do in class has to reflect
00:07:53.17 what you're going to give on the assessments for questions,
00:07:56.25 and that has to reflect the learning objectives
00:08:00.06 that you told students about at the start of the course.
00:08:03.04 It doesn't really matter the form of teaching
00:08:04.28 that the person is doing,
00:08:06.10 as long as they're reflective about what they're doing
00:08:09.09 and the choices that they've made.
00:08:11.09 I mean, the people we're talking about are all scientists,
00:08:13.15 so they're used to experimentation.
00:08:14.29 So, I think that every faculty member
00:08:17.09 should be willing to do some experiments.
00:08:19.16 Say you've lectured for 40 years
00:08:21.27 and, you know, gotten your lecture notes all prepared.
00:08:25.02 Well, how about trying a two-week experiment
00:08:29.00 with something else?
00:08:30.25 Rather than talk in theory and hypotheticals,
00:08:33.04 in the next video we'll give you
00:08:35.29 very practical ways that you can figure out
00:08:39.11 how to engage your students to increase their learning,
00:08:41.06 and not help them memorize, regurgitate, forget,
00:08:43.27 because we all know that's not very meaningful.

This Talk
Speakers: Erin Dolan, A. Malcolm Campbell, Bruce Alberts
Audience:
  • Educators of H. School / Intro Undergrad
  • Educators of Adv. Undergrad / Grad
  • Educators
Recorded: July 2014
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Talk Overview

How can one shift from a teacher-centered to a student-centered classroom model? What are the benefits of active learning for students and instructors?

Educators featured in this video: Bruce Alberts, University of California, San Francisco; Deborah Allen, University of Delaware; Chantilly Apollon, City College of San Francisco; Teaster Baird, Jr., San Francisco State University; A. Malcolm Campbell, Davidson College; Erin Dolan, University of Texas, Austin; Jennifer Hood-DeGrenier, Worcester State; Amy Gladfelter, Dartmouth College; Sabrice Guerrier, Millsaps College; Latanya Hammonds-Odie, Georgia Gwinnett College; Mark Peifer, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Jeff Schinske, De Anza College; Kimberly Tanner, San Francisco State University; Sue Wick, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Bill Wood, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Speaker Bio

Erin Dolan

Erin Dolan

Erin Dolan is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Senior Scholar in Biology Education in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of Georgia. She is also the editor-in-chief of the CBE-Life Science Education journal. Dolan’s lab investigates science research in an education context, including scalable ways of involving students in research… Continue Reading

A. Malcolm Campbell

A. Malcolm Campbell

A. Malcolm Campbell is a Professor of Biology at Davidson College where he has worked for eighteen years. He has been involved in many projects outside of the classroom including being co-editor of CBE Life Sciences Education and founding the Genome Consortium for Active Teaching (GCAT). Continue Reading

Bruce Alberts

Bruce Alberts is currently the Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, and served as Editor-in-Chief of Science Magazine (2008-2013), President of the National Academy of Sciences (1993-2005), and United States Science Envoy (2009-2011). Alberts, who has dedicated his career to promoting science education and international… Continue Reading

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