Tag: active learning
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Four Strategies for Facilitating Group Activities in Remote and Hybrid/Blended Classes
One of the biggest pedagogical shifts in moving in-person classes to remote learning involves modifying active learning activities. Online courses which are designed from the ground up without face-to-face meetings have many ways to engage students (Forbes, 2020). The challenge is to make our remote teaching also be more active. Facilitating active learning assumes greater…
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Should You Require Students To Turn On Their Zoom Cameras?
Getting students actively engaged in learning is the desired goal of instruction in all modalities. The pivot to remote teaching has rekindled productive inquiry about evidence-based strategies for fostering student-instructor, student-content, and student-student forms of interaction in the virtual classroom. This was the focusing theme of a recent High-Contact Strategies session of the College of…
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Pedagogical Boosters
Last week, Cub Kahn posted a blog titled, Practical Solutions to Remote Learning Issues. In that issue, an infographic on remote learning issues, along with practical, evidence-based solutions were shared. This week, the Center for Teaching and Learning is sharing a second infographic, Pedagogical Boosters. But don’t worry, while we often may feel a pinch…
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Bringing out Students’ Best Assets in Remote Teaching: Questioning Reconsidered
To say that these are unprecedented times in higher education is becoming an understatement. Across the country, traditional face-to-face classes are now in remote delivery. University teachers are working assiduously to approximate as much as possible the best practices of traditional classroom teaching format in the digital platform. This unique transition presents the opportunity to…
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Two Heads Are Better Than One: Tips for Making Group Work Work
Group work is a critical element of active learning (Freeman et al. 2014; Brame & Biel, 2015, Hodge, 2017; Tombak & Altun, 2016). The benefits of group work range from promoting learning, metacognition and academic success to developing social interaction, communication, and critical thinking skills. These skills are greatly valued in the workplace (Hodge, 2017;…
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Eating your Peas, like Active Learning, not Preferred but Better for You.
[This is the first in a series of Research Advancing Pedagogy (RAP) blogs, designed to share the latest pedagogical research from across the disciplines in a pragmatic format] “I wish he would just lecture instead of all this active learning stuff. I just want to sit back and take notes.” – Overheard walking behind two…
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Call for Applicants: Research on active learning in undergraduate STEM courses
STEM faculty, want to participate in our research on active learning in undergraduate STEM courses? Participants will be compensated up to $600, they will learn about their own teaching, and they may be selected to attend a free one-day active learning workshop at the University of Oregon. Any travel expenses will be covered. If you…
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It’s OK to Lecture: Tips for Priming Lecture With Active Learning Structures and Techniques
The lecture method has come under serious criticism in recent times (Haave, 2019). A body of research attests to the benefits of active learning (Freeman et al., 2014; Deslauriers et al., 2019). In view of the upsurge of support for active learning, the lecture method seems somewhat anachronistic when it comes to reaching today’s students.…
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Information Density in Lectures: How much content is too much?
Keeping up with the volume of information continually produced in any discipline often feels like a herculean endeavor, and that’s for experts. When we then try to structure our courses so that they reflect the “best,” “most current,” and “cutting edge” information in our field, the problem becomes all the more fraught. On a ten-week…