While this strategy was originally created with public school / high school teaching in mind, moving away from the “Sage on the Stage” model of teaching works really well in the post-secondary classroom. Adult students require increased autonomy in their learning and bring rich life experience to the course. It has been my experience that when you give students the opportunity to actively contribute to the learning in the classroom, there is increased buy-in, their is increased excitement and enjoyment in the course, and their is an increased possibility that students will have a transformational learning experience.

- The Professor’s Apprentice   

unlearningschool:

The basics of engaging students.  People talk about all these fancy strategies for student engagement and inclusion, but it’s pretty simple - just talk less.  If you do, amazing things will happen.  You’ll realize you like your students more than you thought you did.  Your students will like you more than they thought they did.  They will like coming to class.  They will stop you in the hallway to say hi.  They will do their homework more often, and with more quality.  They will tell other teachers that they like you.  You will like your job more.  And you’ll find that the inverse of this graph is also true: the more they talk the less bored you will be.  

Give them some control over what to study.  Put them in front of the room.   Ask them for help with rubrics.  Have them write your tests.  Bring in an expert.  Have them interview each other.  Have a seminar — but whatever you do, for pete’s sake, talk less.

bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation

Thinking critically is at the heart of anybody who wishes to transform their life. - bell hooks

How do we teach students to think critically about their sense of agency, entitlement, privilege, and world view in a way that enhances or transforms their lives?

Technology is wonderful. It allows us to conduct Skype interviews, provide accommodations, and at all times connect to the global world. However, as this article by Trent University Professor Al Slavin explains - Technology is not a substitute for real (face-to-face) relationships and real learning communities.

- Lindy Garneau, The Professor’s Apprentice

How will our bricks-and-mortar universities survive? They must capitalize on their strengths in personal interaction.

by Alan Slavin, for University Affairs

In a recent article in the Guardian Higher Education Network, Matthew Draycott argues that universities must adopt “disruptive technologies” or be left behind. In particular, he cites online courses, including free ones such as those in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MITx, which include “interactive instruction, online laboratories and student-to-student and student-to-professor communication.” Software such as Adobe Connect already allows online students to ask questions of the instructor or make comments to the entire class or to specific students in the class while listening to the instructor speaking, and it accommodates breakout groups easily. Soon a student anywhere in the world will be able to log onto a relatively inexpensive online course, taught by one of the best instructors in the world using effectively limitless technical resources, without leaving home.

Why would any student prefer to attend an (often boring) traditional university lecture at much greater expense?

The only way for our conventional universities to survive is to use our face-to-face advantage to provide a superior education. Better PowerPoint slides and more web links are not the answer; they can be provided even more conveniently in an online course where the student is already seated at a computer. However, other ways to exploit our face-to-face advantage have been identified by pedagogical research.

I am most familiar with my own discipline, physics, where 30 years of research has shown that students learn best if they are given a structured opportunity to discuss the material with other students while it is being taught. 

One such technique is Peer Instruction, in which students read the “lecture” material before class, with class time largely devoted to student-student discussions of concept-intensive questions provided by the instructor (see Peer Instruction by E. Mazur, Benjamin Cummings, 1996). The discussions are followed by a class vote for the correct answer (often with hand-held clickers which display the voting pattern to the entire class), and then clarification by the instructor.

Research has shown that the conceptual understanding of students taught interactively improves twice as much as when they are taught with conventional lecturing, even for superb lecturers (see Hake and UBC). The student-student interaction component is crucial to the method, as it casts students into the roles of questioner and teacher as well as the recipient of knowledge. It also forces all students to join in the discussion, rather than just the few brave enough to ask questions of the instructor. 

Instructors all know that we learn in a different, powerful way when we discuss ideas with our colleagues, and this is no less true of students. Moreover, student discussion is often most fruitful when not inhibited by the direct participation of the instructor, who must still play the crucial role of structuring this discussion to bring out the concepts most commonly misunderstood and clarifying misconceptions. Well-constructed questions create many teachable moments, when the student realizes the incompatibility between her understanding and the theory; e.g. that it does not require a net force to keep a body moving, in spite of what our intuition has told us since childhood.

There seems to be much less research on student-student interactive learning/teaching in the humanities and social sciences at the university level. However, one study that discusses the importance of peer interaction at the university level is described in Making the Most of College: Students Speak their Minds, by Richard J. Light (2001). It shows, not surprisingly, that interactive teaching yields similar excellent results in all disciplines. This book is based on personal interviews with 1,600 undergraduates at 25 colleges and universities. The interviews focused not on what students had learned but on which approaches worked best for them and what changes in teaching they recommended. The book covers a lot of territory in addition to interactive teaching, such as the importance of good student advising, the benefits from a racially and ethnically diverse student body and the importance for students of connecting their academic learning to their personal lives, all of which are best accomplished in a face-to-face setting.

As for interactive learning, the students interviewed claimed that learning outside classes is vital. When asked for an event that changed them profoundly, 80 percent of students chose an event outside of class. 

They also said that homework assignments that force students to work together outside class increase both learning and classroom engagement; those students who developed the most academically underlined the importance of “substantive academic work” that involved working with others, either students or directly with faculty members. These results are in accord with my 2008 study (A.J. Slavin, Can. J. Physics 86, 839-847, 2010) which showed that first-year physics students had a much higher probability of staying in the course if they worked with others on assignments or lived in residence.

What Making the Most of College is missing, because it was published 11 years ago, is a discussion of modern technology to achieve some of the goals of interactive teaching. For example, no mention is made of Peer Instruction. Nor does it mention recent tools such as Top Hat Monocle (developed by University of Waterloo grads) or Purdue University’s Hotseat, both of which allow students to provide real-time feedback to the instructor and each other during class and so enable professors to improve the learning experience. (Students discuss questions in class and can post responses to an online forum which is projected in the classroom. Not only are students very engaged during class, they post as much to the forum after class as during it!)

The closest to these tools discussed in Making the Most of College is probably the “one-minute essay,” which asks students, as they leave the class, to drop off a paper response to the two questions: 

“What is the main idea that you learned in class today?” and “What is the main unanswered question that you leave class with today?” The instructor spends a few minutes reviewing these answers and comes to the next class knowing what students did or did not understand. 

This approach is essentially the same as that in the book Just-in-Time Teaching (1999), which uses a tool such as WebCT/Blackboard Learning System to ask the students similar questions of the pre-class readings, to help prepare the instructor to clarify problem areas. However, even without references to modern technology, Making the Most of College is an important read and provides a multitude of suggestions for how brick-and-mortar universities can remain viable.

Given the enormous challenges from excellent online courses from anywhere in the world, it is clear that conventional universities must capitalize on the strengths of personal interaction if they are to survive. These advantages must be cultivated and advertised carefully; business as usual is not an option.

Alan Slavin is professor emeritus at Trent University. His 2007 article Has Ontario taught its high-school students not to think? is still one of the most-read articles on the University Affairs website.

At the end of the year students were asked to prepare a 15 minute presentation to be given in front of their classmates and myself. This presentation had to focus on one question – What have you learned this year?

The presentations could take on any form. Students were encouraged to use any and all types of media. They were encouraged to be creative and to use their unique strengths, or to extend their learning edge and move beyond their comfort zones and try something completely new.

The students created PowerPoint’s, told stories, painted scrolls, build model schools, preformed spoken word poetry, baked muffins, played music, and tumbled out from behind a desk. They were amazing and brilliant in their different ways of sharing their experiences. One student chose to use her technological skills and create a video as part of her presentation (posted above).

The point of this exercise is to give students an opportunity to share their learning experience with their fellow classmates in a way that is unique to them. It is important for genuine creativity to be encouraged, nurtured, and rewarded as part of the formal learning process.

Video created by: Madeleine Ross 

The ongoing joke in the classroom this year has been that I make students cry. The truth is the students have created a learning environment in which it is safe to be vulnerable, open, and honest with each other.  Throughout our learning journeys when vulnerability is mixed with personal truth it can often manifests itself in the form of tears. I do not make students cry, I simply encourage them to be themselves and to bring all of who they are at that exact moment into the classroom. This includes their emotions and their tears. While feelings and emotions are generally frowned upon within the classroom, giving way instead to facts and reason, I think creating safe spaces for authentic emotion is important when teaching to the whole student.      

During a final class presentation one student expressed the importance of being able to become emotional during class. She also talked about how tapping into her emotion allowed her to personally connect with her learning. The notion of emotionally connecting with the learning process is not a new idea for me, however when paired with the concept of personal connection I began to see that there are more layers involved in the student – learning relationship.

Learning is about much more than facts, figures, theory, and memorization. Learning is about discovering who we are and what matters to us. When we learn we might not always remember exactly what was taught to us, however what we do remember is how it made us feel. Lorne Ellingson, one of my greatest teachers would often talk about the importance of engaging the head, heart, and hands in the learning process. When we engage our emotions and our feelings with our learning we are able to connect with our hearts and integrate the content that matters to us into our lives. This is transformational learning. 

If I need to bring Kleenex to every class I ever teach I will be grateful, for I will know the students are experiencing something real and that they are feeling safe enough to be vulnerable to the process of their learning.

I leave you with this: In what ways have you been able to emotionally connect with your learning journey?

I teach a first year university course which is comprised of 21 students. 11 students identify as Indigenous and represent several different Nations. 10 students identify as being non-Indigenous and also represent several different lines of heritage. Nine students identify as having a learning related disability. All students are valuable members of our learning community. Students are able to take risks, explore their learning, be who they are, and bring their talents into the classroom. How is it that with such a diverse group of learners we are able to come together and create a safe learning community?

After experiencing each student’s presentation about what he/she has learned this year, I have some thoughts:

1.The class environment works because everyone is treated the same. There is no segregation. Everyone listens to each other and respects each other.

2. We sit in a circular shape. Everyone is equal. We can see each others faces. We can hear each others voices. We know each others names. We know at least one story about each other.

3. Each person is given an opportunity to speak during every class.

4. Asking questions is valued more than answering them.

5. There is autonomy in the learning process.

6. There is no judgement.

7. Everyone is a learner and everyone is a teacher.

This is not an extensive list and I am not sure any of it gets to the heart of how a safe learning community is created. I put this question out to you: How do educators set the tone of the classroom, so that together with the students, a safe learning community can be created?