Active Learning

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Active Learning
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Active Learning

• is a multi-directional learning experience in
  which learning occurs
• teacher-to-student,
• student-to-teacher,
• and student-to-student.

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Active Learning involves

• activity-based learning experiences input,
  process, and output. These activity-based
  experiences take many shapes such as whole class
  involvement, teams, small groups, trios, pairs,
  individuals.

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Activity-based experiences

• take many forms talking, writing, reading,
  discussing, debating, acting, role-playing,
  journaling, conferring, interviewing, building,
  creating, and the list continues.

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Active Learning is accomplished through
innumerable strategies.

• Considering all shapes and forms of
  activity-based experiences, Active Learning is
  accomplished through innumerable strategies. In
  his book, Mel Silberman presents 101 concrete
  strategies with variations on each. This
  presentation demonstrates a few Active Learning
  strategies to help you get started and stimulate
  your thinking about creating your own strategies
  that work for you, your students, your course
  content.

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Active Learning is one of the seven principles

• established in "Seven principles of Good
  Practice in Undergraduate Education" (1987, AAHE
  Bulletin). In The Seven principles in Action,
  Susan Rickey Hatfield, editor, David G. Brown and
  Curtis W. Ellison explain

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HOW as well as WHAT

• "Active Learning is not merely a set of
  activities, but rather an attitude on the part of
  both students and faculty that makes learning
  effective The objective of Active Learning is to
  stimulate lifetime habits of thinking to
  stimulate students to think about HOW as well as
  WHAT they are learning and to increasingly take
  responsibility for their own education." (p 40)

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Mel Silberman contrasts Active Learning and
memorization

• "real learning is not memorization. Most of what
  we memorize is lost in hours. Learning can't be
  swallowed whole. To retain what has been taught,
  students must chew on it."

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Repeated Exposures

• Silberman explains that learning comes "in waves"
  through repeated exposures of different kinds
  involving multiple senses. "When learning is
  active, the learner is seeking something an
  answer to a question, information to solve a
  problem, or a way to do a job."

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Active Learning Strategies

• Many Active Learning strategies involve
  collaboration with peers, providing a secure
  environment for growth and exploration of ideas.
  "What a student discusses with others and what a
  student teaches others enable him or her to
  acquire understanding and master learning."
  (Silberman, p6)

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Why use Active Learning strategies to teach any
subject?

• Active Learning leads to effective and efficient
  teaching and learning. The diagrams on the next
  slides help to further illustrate Active
  Learning's research-proven effectiveness
• Dale's Cone Dale's Cone diagrams effectiveness
  of learning according to the media involved in
  learning experiences. The chart illustrates the
  results of research conducted by Edgar Dale in
  the 1960s. According to Dale's research, the
  least effective method, the top of the cone,
  involves learning from information presented
  through verbal symbols, i.e., listening to spoken
  words. The most effective method, the bottom of
  the cone, involves direct, purposeful learning
  experiences, such as hands-on or field
  experiences.

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Learning Pyramid

• The Learning Pyramid charts the average retention
  rate for various methods of teaching. These
  retention percentages represent the results of
  research conducted by National Training
  Laboratories in Bethel, Maine. According to the
  chart, lecture, the top of the pyramid, achieves
  an average retention rate of 5. On the opposite
  end of the scale, the "teach others/immediate
  use" method achieves an average retention rate of
  90.

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Active Learning increases the effectiveness

• and efficiency of the teaching and learning
  process. Teachers want students to leave a class
  with knowledge and or skills they did not have
  when they began the class. Months later, teachers
  want those same students to retain the learning,
  apply it to new situations, build upon that
  learning to develop new perspectives, and
  continue the learning process.

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Please pause 3 minutes and discuss

• This level of learning, resulting in retention
  and transfer, occurs most efficiently through
  concrete activity-based experiences. Why? Some
  answers are.
• Now continue!

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Sensory Learning

• Active Learning involves input from multiple
  sources through multiple senses (hearing, seeing,
  feeling, etc.).

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Critical Thinking

• Active Learning involves process, interacting
  with other people and materials, accessing
  related schemata in the brain, stimulating
  multiple areas of the brain to act.

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Publish Responses

• Active Learning involves output, requiring
  students to produce a response or a solution or
  some evidence of the interactive Learning that is
  taking place. Online environments provide easy
  ways to instantly publish to a wide audience.

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Active Learning and Passive Learning Contrasted

• Active learning may be contrasted with passive
  learning as
• Less emphasis on information dispensing.
• More emphasis on active engagement with the
  stimulus material.
• Less emphasis on memorization.
• More emphasis on higher order thinking.
• Less emphasis on knowledge alone.
• More emphasis on what students can do with the
  knowledge.
• Less emphasis on passive acceptance of a
  prescribed value system.
• More emphasis on discovering and developing own
  values.

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Get Ready to Pause..

• For an Interactive Game!
• After the next slide,
• Eject the video for five minutes, while we play
• Think, Pair, Share Two sides of the same coin!

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Think, Pair, Share Two sides of the same coin!

• In groups of two brainstorm active learning
  strategies that you think might not work in an
  online environment
• Then flip the mental coin and come up with ways
  in which you MIGHT be able to use that strategy
  in an online environment.
• For example A Field trip to the zoo
• Coin flip Virtual field trip to the National
  Zoo. http//natzoo.si.edu/ (After 5 minutes,
  continue video)

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Active Learning Strategiesfor Online
environments

• Brainstorming is a good technique for generating
  ideas quickly. When conducted properly, it
  stimulates fresh ideas and enables participants
  to break loose from fixed ways of responding to
  problems. http//www.groupboard.com/

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Games

• Games often promote rich discussion as
  participants work hard to prove their point.
  However, games can also promote competition, so
  remind participants of the group rules prior to
  the game. http//scsite.com/dc2003/index.cfm?fusea
  ctionmainchap10modulelearn

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Mini-Lectures

• Mini-lectures offer a concise way to provide
  necessary background information, research
  findings, and motivational examples. Just
  remember to keep it brief!
• http//www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/
• Virtual Professor
• Merlot

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Small Group Work

• Small group work allows every participant the
  chance to speak, share personal views, and
  develop the skill of working with others. These
  sessions are most effective when participants
  have time to reflect on what they learned or
  experienced, and when the facilitator draws out
  the key points of the activity.
  http//www.nicenet.org/

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Cooperative Group Work

• Cooperative group work requires all group members
  to work together to complete a given task.
  Members have the opportunity to develop a variety
  of interpersonal and small-group social skills,
  including the ability to lead, develop trusting
  relationships, make decisions, resolve conflicts,
  and communicate effectively.

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Role Playing

• Role-playing is a method of acting out an
  imaginary, but real-life situation. It is an
  excellent strategy to use when the facilitator
  wants participants to try out new behaviors,
  understand how another person might react to a
  given situation, and/or take risks with new ways
  of behaving, without fear of failure or negative
  consequences.

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Case Studies

• Case studiesreal-life stories that describe in
  detail what happened to a community, family,
  school, or individualprovide the opportunity for
  participants to consider the forces that converge
  to make an individual or group act in one way
  rather than another and to evaluate the
  consequences. http//industry.java.sun.com/casestu
  dies/

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Field Trips

• http//www.virtualblackboard.com/trips.htm
• Virtual Tours
• Individually conducted, then group shared
• Or follow up team work
• Scavenger Hunts

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Simulations

• Simulations are activities structured to feel
  like real experiences. In simulations exercises,
  participants are asked to imagine themselves in a
  situation, or play a structured game or activity
  that enables them to experience a feeling that
  might occur in another setting. www.froguts.com,
• http//scsite.com/dc2003/index.cfm?fuseactionmain
  modulelabschap10

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Assessment

• www.mygradebook.com
• Portfolio Assessment
• On-line journaling, online quizzes
• http//scsite.com/dc2003/index.cfm?fuseactionmain
  chap10modulecheck
• Webct
• Blackboard
• Rubricshttp//www.rubricbuilder.on.ca/
• http//www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/gene
  ral/
• http//www.asd.wednet.edu/EagleCreek/Barnard/sites
  /ed/rubric.htm

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Policies for Online Instruction

• Give very clear and specific instructions.
• Allow time for asynchronous interaction, taking
  into account students in varying time zones.
• Be specific about deadlines for feedback,
  including the date, time of day, and time zone.
• Take advantage of the diverse options for
  interacting electronically, i.e., email, threaded
  discussion, attachments, class folders and drop
  boxes.

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Lets Get Active

• In creating Active Learning Online!
• Step 1 Take a distance learning course
• Or try an online tutorial.
• Step2 Use www.teacherweb.com or geocities or
  angelfire and enhance part of your coursework
  with an online support environment.
• Step3 Add one or more active learning online
  strategies to your existing course.

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Final Step

• Never stop learning and evolving your coursework
  to meet student needs.
• Technologys role in instruction will increase as
  it meets the diverse needs of a diverse
  population of learners.
• The Beginning!