Hands-on, Active Learning
Teaching methods that promote student participation and active learning are often advocated, however, the term “active learning” lacks a common definition in educational literature. Most educators assume that learning is inherently active; yet research suggests that for students to be actively learning, they need to do more than just listen. They must be dynamically engaged in tasks and in thinking processes. An advocate for integrating active learning into the curriculum is Dr. Kris Wood of ME. Supported by a NSF CCLI grant, Dr. Wood, a colleague, Dr. Dan Jensen from the United States Air Force Academy, and their team of graduate students and experts in education and assessment are not only creating activity learning products (ALPs), but they are also assessing what difference they make. And they are finding that introducing active learning exercises into traditional lectures improve student learning.
Why undertake this ALPs project? As good teachers, they realized that their students needed more in-depth thinking during class time. They also knew that covering content did not equate to student learning and that a reduction in class coverage could make a difference. In fact, including the ALPs in their courses resulted in 60% of the content being covered.
Actively involving college students in lecture-based classes can be challenging, but Drs. Wood and Jensen have developed twenty-eight Active Learning Products (ALPs) for engineering mechanics instruction. The ALPS range from hands-on exercises, thought experiments, forensic investigations, physical measurements, interactive multimedia exercises, to design applications. In producing the ALPs, an Active Learning Product Design Methodology was created that can be used for designing ALPs for other technical topics. The systematic methodology begins with defining the educational goals, generating ideas, systematic selection of ideas, and finally implementation and evaluation of the newly-created ALP.
Assessment has been integral to the development and validation of the ALPs. Seven of the twenty-eight activities have been rigorously evaluated to date. Evaluation consisted of a variety of measures, including student opinion surveys, focus groups, pre/post activity quizzes, exam questions and a concept inventory. In addition, demographic information, student learning styles and Myers- Briggs Personality were measured and are correlated to the student evaluation measures. Findings are positive. For example, the course and instructor ratings for ME 338 (Machine Design) have significantly improved from an overall instructor of rating of 2.9 to 4.8 and an overall course rating of 2.9 to 4.9. Furthermore, the methodology seeks to relate varied student personality types and learning styles to active learning. Our findings show team grades improve when they utilize personality and learning styles criteria. These are just a few of the highlights, but we can suffice to say that ALPS are improving students learning.
If you would like to use any of these ALPS in your classes or take a closer look at the design methodology, go to http://www.me.utexas.edu/~alps/. At this site, you will find useful items such as materials kits or scholarly publications that can jumpstart your active learning endeavors.