Use Class Activities to Create a Climate for Active Learning

College Teaching, 2013

In this teaching reflection, the author discusses the benefits of incorporating learners’ input into classroom content design, starting with the syllabus, to invite a more democratic learning process. She suggests four guiding questions teachers can employ throughout their courses, working with learners to create a collaborative classroom culture and encouraging individual and group creativity, while connecting the course content and material to students’ multiple learning styles and everyday lives.

Collected Essays on …, 2009

2018

Introductory classes are essential for understanding any course. In a traditional class format, the instructor delivers lecture to students who passively grasps the information presented to them. However, recent researches emphasize on the importance of active student engagement in classroom for better retention. The paper presents a demonstration of class activity designed to engage students in introductory psychology course for undergraduate students. It tries to foster critical thinking and application of various viewpoints through class participation. The study took place in two sections of Introduction to Psychology course with 84 participants in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In one section, a class of one hour and thirty minutes was allocated for the activity, i.e. five groups were created to represent five Psychological perspectives, case reading and presentation was done in groups as well as question and answer round took place among each group. In another section, the case was presented to students for reading and analyzing it during their free time after class. The responses were marked from their examination scripts. The result indicates a significant difference in responses from those who took part in the class activity than those who did not. The students had better recall of elements from the case and could relate more to real life situations.

2020

This reflection is based on an educational assignment from my Intro to Theatre course at California State University, San Bernardino, April 2019. As an educator, I am always interested in combining new techniques with tried and true approaches. My hope is twofold- enhance my students learning and keep me inspired. The concept of a beginning, middle and end in all classes, provides structure for your students and keeps the pedagogy focused. I incorporated the “I do, we do, you do” approach to support a well-balanced framework for the class period. This technique is a creative take on a beginning, middle and end

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2009

Course syllabi provide valuable information which enables meaningful communication between the students and the instructors. They can also be used as a contract, a plan or as a means for learning and teaching. The lively and effective classroom atmosphere, where all the students are engaged into the lesson, could be obtained when the syllabi are prepared thoroughly in order to

In the context of a relatively traditional second year module in for mechanical engineering students, Strength of Materials, changes were made to module delivery to facilitate more active learning. The motivation was a perceived need to improve the level of understanding achieved by the students. Justification for the changes was an assessment of student learning style preferences, which indicate a strong preference for active learning. Results show that changes in how lecture and tutorial activities were managed increased the level of student engagement during classroom sessions. In addition, ‘small step’ approaches to problem solving proved popular among students. The study also indicates that both students and lecturers need time to become practiced in the new approach, and that benefits of changes to traditional ‘talk and chalk’ lecturing may take time to become apparent.

Lecture is a much maligned classroom method of instruction. Like any other technique employed by educators, there are both effective and ineffective ways to deliver content through a lecture format. Respecting that the college learner has changed, active lecturing strategies maximize student learning of course content, engaging both modern learners and teachers at higher levels. The active lecture strategies presented are grounded in Chickering and Gamson's seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education and provide a balanced approach to providing content and opportunities to connect to the content that help students not only master the material presented in class, but also the out-of-class material students access in their readings and experiences.

L’acacia, Rivista di studi esoterici, 2022