National Forum for Active Learning Classrooms, Day 2

Today's discussions focused more on faculty development (at least the ones I attended).

Kurt Richter's talk on University of North Carolina's Active Learning Academy had a nice focus on the continuum of classroom activities between a lecture and complete student-centered collaboration.  One insight out of this discussion was that the big step is to get faculty to move from all lecture to something besides lecture -- and then they see the benefit more easily and shift further along the continuum.  I believe that most faculty who only teach through lecture do not think that that is what they are doing, so some class observation may be in order to give them convincing evidence.
North Carolina's Academy does exactly that -- if you join, you agree to have others observe your class, and not just once or twice but multiple times with multiple folks from multiple disciplines.  That can be quite disruptive to your class.
One resource introduced at this session was http://info.catme.org/, a site for smarter teamwork.
Advice to faculty was -- change only one thing but make sure that is done the right way.  50% of new stuff will fail, but that means that 50% will work for next time, so you can use that and try a different 50% of new stuff that will fails, shrinking down your margin of errors in only a few years.

Idea from this session:  Can we change our student evaluation questions to reflect better what happens in the classroom?

Tawnya Means from the University of Florida was showing us how she incorporated a number of students remotely into her active learning classroom.  Interestingly enough, because of the tool she was using, she could have increased the number of remote students but did not choose to.  Adobe Connect was what they are using, with a very sophisticated switch system to allow for flexible audio and video in and out puts.

Here some of the thoughts in our session:

After that Diane and I guided our session on scalable faculty development, and the conference finished with the discussion of what a classroom is and where we learn.  Key is the creation of authentic learning experiences, but also to remember that all of our students learn all the time, but not because they are in what we designate a classroom.  Tom Fisher talked about his experience of letting his students decide where to hold individual class meetings, and to his surprise not a single student chose a classroom -- instead, they all chose public spaces, allowing others to participate actively or passively in the class.
Tom also gave us some suggestions on what kinds of spaces may be in our future:
Justified Architecture:  http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/node/4672
Teksing Bamboo Wood Schools:  http://www.slideshare.net/namansharma35513/passive-design-strategies
We need to blur the classroom and shift the language away to different kind of space names to make learning less confined.

National Forum for Active Learning, Day 1

Two years ago, I went to the National Forum for Active Learning for the first time, the only person from Auburn.  This time, we are here with six folks, and all of us are presenting!  A great conference with lots of folks doing what we are doing at Auburn, with similar questions, similar approaches, but with just enough differences that each session does bring some new insights, ideas, thoughts I had not quite put into those words.

Bryn Lutes'  (Washington University in St.Louis) presentation on "The Ripple Effect of Active-Learning Classrooms" reminded us that the space allows faculty a great opportunity to rethink the way their course is structured -- and then those same strategies can be used in a regular classroom, albeit with some adjustments.  One interesting observation from her space was that the distance between the collaborative tables was too far for inadvertent cross-pollination -- groups really had to work within themselves rather than crane their neck to get an idea from the next group over.  As a result, group assignments are taking longer.  This led to the realization that group work in a regular classroom may not be rigorous enough.
POGIL  - process oriented guided inquiry learning was mentioned, with one variation that you add a carousel element to this so that groups can comment on and further other groups' work. For more on POGIL, check out https://pogil.org/
One concern was that active learning furniture makes individual assessment difficult -- the fear of cheating. I am wondering if that is really something that happens or, just like with online courses, simply the fear of the unknown, with exams being a possibly easy argument for not moving into this direction.

Node chair with base

Interesting comment on Node chairs:  Custodial staff finds rooms with these chairs considerably longer to clean because the base is used as a trash can



The keynote by Kim Eby from George Mason University focused on creating a campus culture that rewards faculty for innovation and creativity -- even if it may come with some necessary failures.  Creating such a culture includes awareness of all stakeholders, inclusive discussions, explicit inclusion into strategic plans, and give faculty and students ways to break out of routines as "routine is a precursor to not fully engaging."  I like her idea of making learning visible -- this of course happens in active learning spaces because the students are visibly engaging with the material, but there must be other ways to make the learning visible to faculty, students, administration, and alumni - she did not mention alumni, but I am wondering how we can do that more effectively.

David Langley, University of Minnesota Twin Cities, talked about seven of his sixteen insights he gleaned from "What I Learned From Observing 60 Hours of Instruction in Active Learning Classrooms."  As U of M has an entire building of active learning classrooms, carefully selecting who gets to teach in these spaces is not really an option, and so faculty teach without having taken the time to evaluate what the different space may do to their class.  "Spaces invite but to not compel anyone to do anything."  His observations covered fifteen faculty across nine disciplines and different professional levels, with various class sizes and range of level across undergraduate classes.  His insights include:
Pedagogical choices trump room design -- one idea was that faculty teach to a projected image of themselves - is that true?
A nudge can sustain student engagement -- maintain the energy level of students coming into class by focusing it on a problem, topic to discuss, rather than shutting them all down through lecture.
Clarity drives student commitment -- students are committed to what they understand
Compelling tasks focus student energy
Proximity personalizes learning
Public spaces are also private habitats
Knowledge is socially and individually constructed -- so not all time in the classroom has to be collaborative work

Faculty need to wrestle with emotional investment (what pedagogies energize me as a teacher?), skill (what pedagogies can I do really well?) and student needs (what pedagogies are most needed by students in active learning spaces?).  Hopefully there is some overlap in the answers to these questions.
White boards etc are called Public Thinking Spaces.

Laura Lukes, George Mason University, demonstrated "Using Gigapan Images in Technolgy-Enhanced Active Learning Classrooms to Create VIrtual Field Experiences for Students."  Laura teaches Geology and General Science courses that are of a size to make actual field trips practically impossible.  Gigapan images are stitched together high definition images that allow for a broad view of a subject but also the option to zoom in to amazing detail.  Students get a general sense of a setting but then can zoom in to observe details.  Skills to practice are observation in contrast to inference, formulation of hypotheses, discussion of how to test such hypotheses.
There are already lots of Gigapan images out there, many of them open source, and in addition to Geology and Social Sciences for larger images, one can also connect a microscope to a camera and really go into great depth on a subject in biology.
Check out some of the available images at http://www.gigapan.com/

At the round table discussion, Kelsey Metzger from University of Minnesota Rochester was asking us to explore whether there was such a thing of too much active learning - what if all classes are like that?  Are we overtaxing our students?  I think the consensus was that we are not, but that we do not need to have a big collaborative project in every single class.  Key here is, I think, the lack of understanding from students how much time they are supposed to spend on a class outside of the classroom.  A participant from the Netherlands pointed out that half of their MD programs are based in PBL -- with the result of improved retention and shorter time to graduation.

Pamela McGranahan and George Jura, University of Wisconsin Madison, talked us through an application of "Design Thinking in Two Hours -- a Teaching Strategy for Active Learning Classrooms," in this case for a Nursing class.  They use the principles of Design Thinking, based on David Kelley's ideas (http://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_how_to_build_your_creative_confidence?language=en) and Doug Dietz's thinking (http://dschool.stanford.edu/student/doug-dietz/) to give nursing students the chance to tackle a problem and protoype a solution, allowing students to define a problem that has arisen out of a complex challenge, interpret, have an idea, experiment, assess and develop the solution further.

The final presentation of the day was Ioulia Rytikova's and Mihai Boicu's (George Mason U) presentation on how they are structuring their course on Database Design -- a difficult course in their IT program that is required but not at all liked by students.  Their course, based on the idea that students need to be guided carefully, in baby steps, through the learning processes of database design, had some interesting ideas on how to encourage a reluctant student population.

 

FInally, here a couple of photos from the poster presentation:

Auburn University poster

Auburn University poster