Motivating Active and Group Learning

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Motivating Active and Group Learning

• Steve Wolfman
• University of Washington
• CCSC-NW 2002

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Why Active and Group Learning?

• Flagging attention McConnells meds, Blighs
  heart rate/memory
• Critical/Higher-order thinking Blooms Taxonomy
• Varied learning styles Felders Learning Styles
• Constructivist knowledge building
• ZoPeDs Vygotskys Zones of Proximal
  Development
• Communicating ideas

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Why worry about motivation?

• Help students understand why active and group
  learning
• Get students to
• Engage
• Connect
• Communicate
• Interact

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Rules of Thumb for Motivation

• Disclose your reasons
• Diversify your exercises
• Make engaging exercises
• Design for groups

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Rule of Thumb 1Disclose

• Tell students what you and they are doing and
  why follow up!
• first day shout
• learning styles descriptions Thomas et al.
• explaining group work/learning styles results
  Deibel
• problems w/motivation w/out explicit follow-up

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Rule of Thumb 2Diversify

• Embrace diversity in your problems, your
  students solutions, and in your students.
• data structures problems Deibel
• syntactic salt
• little sister CAT VanDeGrift
• prime words

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Rule of Thumb 3Make engaging problems

• Create problems with intrinsic interest.
• disequilibration Reed
• Lets Make a Deal, board problem
• experimentation
• Sort Detective Levine
• real-world connection
• execution time w/out loops, real clients in SE
• group atmosphere
• game shows, show-and-tell

1st part 2/3 of original 2nd part 4 1st
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Rule of Thumb 4Design for groups

• Encourage interdependence in groups
  JohnsonJohnson, FelderBrent
• challenging problems
• resource interdependence
• Jigsaw Learning, Latent Jigsaw Deibel
• variety of perspectives
• gender/diversity issues
• Corollary get to know your students!

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Bonus Rule of ThumbManage Expectations
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References

• Jeffrey McConnell on Active Learning
• Johnson and Johnson on Cooperative and
  Collaborative Learning
• Dave Reed on disequilibration
• David Levine on experimentation
• Eric Roberts on engaging the group