active learning

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ACTIVE LEARNING TEACHING

• BY J.B.PUJARA
• A.P.(EE DEPT)
• Teaching Learning Processworkshop
• 5-9 JULY,2010
• KALOL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

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CONTENTS

• CONCEPT OF ACTIVE LEARNING
• Ideas to Encourage Students
• Daily Lesson Plan
• 7 Principles of Good Practice in Education
• Evaluating Our Own Teaching
• Good Teaching The Top 10 Requirements
• Improving Teaching
• Enhancing Our Teaching Effectiveness
• How to Improve Teaching Quality?

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WHAT IS ACTIVE LEARNING ?

• THERE ARE 180000 CITATIONS ON GOOGLE ABOUT ACTIVE
  LEARNING.

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Definition of active learning

• Active Learning refers to techniques where
  students do more than simply listen to a lecture.
  Students are doing something including
  discovering, processing, and applying information
  (McKinney 2007 ).
• Processing and Applying Information.

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Definition of active learning

• Construct interesting problem spaces that serve
  to really engage the learners interest, and,
  hence, to motivate them in ways that are
  authentic
• (Carson 2009).
• Motivate the students.

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Definition of active learning

• Active Learning is comprised of a student
  centered environment which raises students
  motivational level to stimulate thinking and go
  beyond facts and details (Brody 2009).
• Stimulate Thinking.

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Active learning

• Sachin tendulkar wears T shirt, on back side of
  which number 10 is written . Why?

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TYPES OF LEARNERS

• Visual Learners
• Auditory Learners
• Read-write Learners
• Kinesthetic Learners

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Visual Learners

• Visual learners are characterized by the
  following
• They tend to be fast talkers.
• They exhibit impatience and have a tendency to
  interrupt.
• They use words and phrases that evoke visual
  images.
• They learn by seeing and visualizing.
• Our teaching strategy for visual learners should
  include the use of demonstrations and visually
  pleasing materials, and we should make an effort
  to paint mental pictures for learners.

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Auditory Learners

• Auditory learners are characterized by the
  following
• They speak slowly and tend to be natural
  listeners.
• They think in a linear manner.
• They prefer to have things explained to them
  verbally rather than to read written information.
• They learn by listening and verbalizing.
• Our teaching strategy for auditory learners
  should sound good and should be planned and
  delivered in the form of an organized
  conversation.

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Read-Write Learners

• Read-write learners are characterized by the
  following
• They prefer for information to be displayed in
  writing, such as lists of ideas.
• They emphasize text-based input and output.
• They enjoy reading and writing in all forms.

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Cont.

• Our teaching strategy for read-write learners
  should include writing out key words in list
  form.
• The learners will learn by silently reading or
  rewriting their notes repeatedly writing out in
  their own words the ideas and principles that
  were taught or discussed organizing any
  diagrams, graphs, other visual depictions into
  statements.
• Putting reactions, actions, diagrams, charts, and
  flowcharts into words. They like multiple-choice
  tests.

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Kinesthetic Learners

• Kinesthetic learners are characterized by the
  following
• They tend to be the slowest talkers of all.
• They tend to be slow to make decisions.
• They use all their senses to engage in learning.
• They learn by doing and solving real-life
  problems.
• They like hands-on approaches to things and
  learn through trial and error.
• Our teaching strategy for kinesthetic learners
  should include hands on demonstrations and case
  examples to be discussed and solved

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Cont.

• There are a variety of types of learners in a
  single classroom.Therefore, it is important to
  incorporate multiple teaching methods.
• It is also important to know what your own
  predominant learning style is, because when you
  teach, you may unintentionally favor your
  learning style and shortchange other types of
  learners in the classroom.
• Although it is difficult to address everyones
  needs, it is important to meet as many needs as
  possible. To accomplish this, the instructor
  should assess learners needs and issues.

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Need of active learning

• There needs to be some information transfer, but
  information that is only shared in a passive
  learning format is likely to become boring or
  seem irrelevant to learners. The key to teaching
  adults is to provide new information that is
  relevant and usable within a relatively short
  period of time.
• A good framework to keep in mind is the active
  training credo

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PASSIVE VS ACTIVE LEARNING

• .

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.

• What I hear, I forget.
• What I hear and see, I remember a little.
• What I hear, see, and ask questions about or
  discuss with someone else, I begin to understand.
• What I hear, see, discuss, and do, I acquire
  knowledge and skill.
• What I teach to another, I master. (Silberman,
  1996, p. 1)

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Cont.

• As a teacher, our goal is not only to present
  information that learners need but also to
  facilitate experiences that will help them gain
  and master the knowledge and skills that they
  need to know and practice.
• By using a variety of teaching techniques and by
  actively involving learners in the experience, we
  increase the chances that they will retain and
  use the information.

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.

• The engineering students are visual learners They
  more understands simulations, pictures, graphs,
  videos, charts, drawings.
• While literature student understand the text
  language. So we have to give proper environment
  to each student.

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Cont.

• Instructors may feel that they lose control of
  the class when they allow exercises to dominate
  classroom time.
• By utilizing multiple training styles such as
  lecture, experiential activities, and small and
  large group activities, and by repeating the
  information Throughout the session we can involve
  students in active learning.
• An active learning process involves listening,
  demonstrating, interacting, and understanding in
  order to engage all learners

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FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING

• Learning is not an automatic process. There
  are a number of factors that can inhibit the
  process. These may include one or more of the
  following
• Learner feels he or she is at least as competent
  in the subject matter as the instructor.
• Learner is fearful of being seen as inferior or
  of being embarrassed.
• Learner is anxious.
• Learner has had a bad learning experience in the
  past.
• Not knowing scientific techniques for how to
  read? And how to recall?

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FACTORS AFFECTING LEARNING

• Learner comes to the session with other problems
  on his or her mind and is unable to focus.
• Learner is in class against his or her will and
  resents this.
• Learner is interested in the material but is
  constrained by time and focused on other
  priorities.
• Learner has personal barriers or biases to
  learning about the topic. For example, a
  learner may be resistant to learning about a
  topic (e.g., evolution) that contradicts his or
  her religious beliefs.
• Physical problem/ transportation problem
• Learner is uncomfortable with the learning
  technique being used this is common when
  learners are being introduced to technology for
  the first time.

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Teaching related problem

• Lack of knowledge
• Not like profession
• Money related/ salary
• Too much clerical work
• Not encouragement
• Poor student quality
• Lack of infrastructure
• Discourage by seniors for implementing new ideas.
• Class strength.
• Non availability of OHP,LCD and other softwares

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Ideas to Encourage Students for active learning

• Faculty student interaction
• Learn the name of students as quickly as
  possible.
• At the end of each class, ask one student to stay
  for a minute to chat.
• Instead of returning tests/ quiz in class, ask
  students to pick them up from your cabin.
• Give students a respectful answer to any question
  they might ask.

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Idea Ideas to Encourage Students for active
learning

• Faculty student interaction (continue)
• Be aware of the difference between students
  classroom mistakes and their personal successes/
  failures.
• Be honest about your feelings, opinions and
  attitudes toward students and toward the subject
  matter.
• Lend some of your books to students and borrow
  some of their in return.
• Establish a system for absences, work missed,
  assignments, tutorials etc.

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Ideas to Encourage Students for active learning

• General classroom management
• Reach to class before the students arrive be the
  last to leave.
• Throughout the course, but particularly during
  the crucial first class sessions emphasize your
  willingness to give individual help.
• List and discuss your course objectives on the
  first day. Tell them what they should expect of
  you and how you will contribute to their
  learning.
• Distribute an outline of your lecture notes
  before class starts.

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Ideas to Encourage Students for active learning

• General classroom management (continue)
• Use familiar examples in presenting materials.
• Have movement in the class as we talk or ask
  questions. This brings a closeness to the
  students.
• Vary our instructional techniques
• When we answer a students question, be sure
  he/she understands your answer.

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Ideas to Encourage Students for active learning

• General classroom management (continue)
• Return tests/ quizzes etc as soon as possible.
  Write comments ( and -) when appropriate.
• Give each student a mid-term grade and indicate
  what each student must do to improve.
• If you had to miss a class, explain why and what
  you will do to make up the time and/or materials.
• Use new notes not old notes.

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Ideas to Encourage Students

• Student initiated activities
• If the class lends itself to a field trip, have
  the students plan it and make some or all of the
  arrangements.
• Ask students to submit sample test questions
  prior to a test.
• Faculty initiated activities
• Take the initiative to contact and meet with
  students who are doing poor work. Be especially
  cognizant of the passive student.

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Ideas to Encourage Students

• Faculty initiated activities
• Set up special tutoring sessions and extra
  classes. Make these activities mandatory,
  especially for students who are doing poorly.
• Teach a class with a colleague or switch classes
  for a period or two. Invite a guest lecturer to
  class.

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Daily Lesson Plan

• Instructional Goal (outcome that students should
  be able to demonstrate upon completion of the
  entire unit)
• Rationale (brief description why you feel the
  students need to learn this topic)
• Lesson content (what is to be taught)

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Daily Lesson Plan

• Instructional procedure
• Focusing event (something to get the students
  attention)
• Teaching procedures (method you will use)
• Formative check (progress checks throughout the
  lesson)
• Student participation (how you will motivate the
  students to participate)
• Closure (how you will end the lesson)

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7 Principles of Good Practice in Education

• Encourage contact between students and faculty
• Develops reciprocity and cooperation among
  students
• Encourages active learning
• Students must talk about what they are learning,
  write
• about it, relate it to past experiences and apply
  it to their
• daily lives.
• Gives prompt feedback
• Emphasizes time on talk
• Students need help in learning effective time
  management
• Communicate high expectations
• Important for the poorly prepared, for those
  unwilling to exert themselves, and for the bright
  and well motivated.
• 7. Respect diverse talents and ways of learning

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Evaluating Our Own Teaching

• Assuming that no one is perfect and therefore
  everyone has room for improvement.
• Evaluation is the means by which we try to
  identify which aspects of our teaching are good
  and which need to be changed. The first provide
  global assessment, while the second is analytical
  and diagnostic in character.
• Evaluation is inherent part of good teaching.
  Therefore, teacher himself should take primary
  responsibility for doing the evaluation.

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Evaluating Our Own Teaching

• Why evaluate?
• 1. Gather information about your teaching and
  make an effort to improve some aspect of it.
• 2. To document the quality of ones teaching for
  others.
• 3. Our own mental and psychological satisfaction.

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Evaluating Our Own Teaching

• How to evaluate?
• Sources of information
• 1. Self-monitoring
• 2. Audio/video recording
• 3. Students
• a. Questionnaires
• b. Interviews
• 4. Students test results
• 5. Outside observers
• a. Fellow faculty member
• b. Senior faculty members
• c. Professionals

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Evaluating Our Own Teaching

• Ideas for improving
• Selected colleagues
• Books journals
• Instructional development programs
• Workshops
• Offers deep personal and professional
  satisfaction of being able to say, after a single
  course or after a career of teaching,
• I did my best, and it was good!

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Good Teaching The Top 10 Requirements

• 1 Passion 6 Humor
• 2 Substance 7 Caring / nurturing
• 3 Humanity 8 What is done?
• 4 Experimenting 9 Mentoring
• 5 Style 10 Pleasure
• Good teachers couldnt imagine doing anything
  else.

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Improving Teaching

• Teaching is what almost every professor does, but
  it seems to suffer from that very commonness. It
  occupies the greatest amount of most professors
  time, but rarely operates at the highest level of
  competence.
• Few professors even regard teaching as so
  straightforward that it requires no special
  training.
• Most share the common folk belief that teachers
  are born and not made. Yet those who are great at
  their professions (physicians, attorneys,
  engineers) invariably spent an unnatural amount
  of time acquiring skills and practicing in the
  vortex of intense competition.

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Improving Teaching

• Potentially great teachers become great by the
  same route through conditioning mind, through
  acquiring skills, and through practicing amidst
  intense competition.
• Previously, emphasis was to improve subject
  matter competence. Claimed as rationale was a
  deeper understanding of the content of a
  discipline. Practically no attention was paid to
  how that understanding could best be imparted to
  students.
• The advent of educational technology has forever
  altered concepts about teaching and learning.

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Improving Teaching

• Why improve teaching?
• Institutional reasons
• College where superior teaching is the rule
  than the exception, and where it is sufficiently
  recognized and rewarded, enjoy a distinct
  advantage in the competition for students.
• Faculty member
• Teachers must be attentive to fresh pedagogical
  techniques, student learning theories, and
  technological advances.
• Even best teachers must continue learning in
  order to remain the best.

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Improving Teaching

• Why improve teaching?
• Students
• College students are quite a different mix than
  they were even two decades ago. And those who
  teach to todays students must learn to gear
  instruction to a new classroom dynamic.
• Society and societal forces
• Telecommunications and computer technology have
  emerged as powerful forces in teaching and
  learning.

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Improving Teaching

• No matter how good a teacher is in classroom or
  laboratory, he or she can improve.
• No matter how effective a particular teaching
  method is, it can be enhanced.
• What constitutes effective teaching
• Deep knowledge of the subject
• Ability to communicate with motivate students
• Enthusiasm for the subject and for teaching
• Clarity of presentation
• Fairness

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Improving Teaching

• Instructional improvement efforts
• New teacher
• Lecturing
• Discussions
• Construction tests
• Mid-career teacher
• Learning new skills
• Taking part in interdisciplinary work
• Adopting new technology in the classroom
• Latter stages of careers
• Systematically reflecting on their teaching
• Becoming mentor for their junior colleagues

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Improving Teaching

• Role of Administrators
• Making the campus environment more responsive to
  teaching
• Teaching load should be kept to reasonable
  limits so that the teacher has time to keep
  abreast of changes in the discipline
• Providing the proper setting and tools to support
  instruction
• Unfortunately, in few colleges, classroom
  conditions-including light, heat, air and
  noise-are no beer controlled. Floors are not
  swept. Equipment doesnt work. Failure to pay
  attention to these details suggests to teachers
  that teaching is considered a second-class
  activity by the institute.

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Improving Teaching

• Role of Administrators
• Rewarding improved teaching
• Many teachers argue that the biggest roadblock
  to improved teaching is the reward system that
  pits teaching against research. Many institutions
  give lip service to the importance of the
  teaching but then turn around and reward
  scholarly research and publication.
• Clearly the reward system needs to be reworked
  so that there is greater recognition of superior
  teaching.

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Improving Teaching

• Teaching is an art and not science. Yet, every
  artist needs a grounding in technique before
  setting to work, and there is no artist-or
  teacher-who cannot improve his or her skill.

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Improving Teaching

• President John F Kennedy was found of telling a
  story about the French Marshall Louis Lyautey.
• When the Marshall announced that he wished to
  plant a tree, his gardener responded that the
  tree would not reach full growth for more than on
  hundred years. In that case, Marshall replied,
  we have no time to lose. We must start to plant
  this afternoon.
• Administrators and faculty intent on improving
  teaching also have no time to lose. They, too,
  must start to plant this evening.

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Enhancing Our Teaching Effectiveness

• Seize the moment
• Involve the students in planning
• Begin with what the students knows
• Move from simple to complex
• Accommodate the students preferred learning
  style
• Sort goals by learning domain
• Make material meaningful
• Allow immediate application of knowledge
• Plan for periodic rests
• Tell your students how they are progressing
• Reward desired learning with praise

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How to implement active learning

• Many faculty members are irate. They argue that
  TQIwas developed by and for industry to improve
  profits. Industry and institute are totally
  different, and talking of students as customers
  is offensive and makes no sense.
• Nevertheless, TQI has NOT established itself as
  the way many institutes operate, especially in
  matters related to classroom instruction

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How to ImproveTeaching Quality

• Write instructional objectives
• Instructional objectives are statements of
  specific actions that students should be able to
  perform if they have mastered the content and
  skills, the instructor has attempted to teach.
• At the end of this course, chapter, week,
  lecture , the students should be able to
• To do well on the next exam, the student should
  be able to
• Where is a phrase that begins with an action
  verb.

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How to Improve Teaching Quality

• Illustrative phrases attached instructional
  objectives
• Knowledge list, state
• Comprehension explain, paraphrase
• Application calculate, solve
• Analysis derive, simulate
• Synthesis design, make up
• Evaluation determine, select
• The last three categories are often referred to
  as the higher level thinking skills.

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How to Improve Teaching Quality

• Use active learning in class
• A classroom research study showed that
  immediately after a lecture students recalled 70
  of the information presented in the first ten
  minutes and only 20 of that from the last ten
  minutes.
• Students attention can be maintained throughout
  a class by periodically giving them something to
  do. i. e. Active learning exercises

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How to ImproveTeaching Quality

• Cooperative learning (CL)
• Proceed gradually when using CL for the first
  time.
• Form teams of 3-4 students out-of-class
  assignments.
• Instructor-formed teams generally work better
  than self-selected teams.
• Give more challenging assignments to teams than
  to individuals.
• Help students learn how to work effectively in
  teams.

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How to Improve Teaching Quality

• An administration wishing to improve the quality
  of its instructional program should first make
  the necessary commitment to provide necessary
  resources and incentives for faculty
  participation.
• Then, dont talk about TQM just do it.

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Final words

• We can teach from our experience but we can not
  teach experience!
• We cannot teach anybody anything, we can only
  make them think

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TEACHER IS

• INSTRUMENT OF
• INSPIRATION?

• TOOL OF TORCHER?
  

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Teaching Learning Process5-9JULY,2010 KALOL
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY