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ideas and research
on high impact learning

Getting Your Students Excited and Engaged in the Classroom

1/17/2016

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PictureGibbs Free Energy Equation
As effective educators, it is the professors’ responsibility to help students become engaged in the materials presented, no matter how boring or dry the topic might be on any particular occasion. Yes, I am saying that sometimes, even my own area of interest can be less than riveting when presented in the classroom. And, as hard as I try to make understanding the Gibbs Free Energy Equation inviting and exciting, students are not always caught up in my fervor for the material. In order to make such information more digestible and in fact, to get your students really engaged, there is a multitude of resources available to mobilize your students’ enthusiasm. 

An active classroom is an engaging classroom. Here at CSUN in the biology department, many of our faculty have introduced competitive games into the students’ classroom experience. Using freely available web-based apps and programs such as Kahoot.it, PollEverywhere.com or Socrative (to name only a few), faculty tap into the natural desire to WIN that students (and everyone else, including department chairs, deans, and provosts) display when presented with a game. Unbeknownst to the students, grappling with real issues of biological importance during a game provides time for practicing and using biological concepts and ideas that reinforce learning. Students compete in real time for “real” prizes (nerdy science shirts or other swag usually received free from vendors, candy donated by faculty, and even money!).
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View of a Kahoot Quiz.
What do you need to get started? Not much!  I recommend trying Kahoot.it for the easiest learning experience. Make a short set of questions (3-5) and launch the game in the classroom. Students can use their cell phones to play. As the game proceeds, once a question is presented and answered, a bar chart showing all the responses is displayed, providing the perfect opportunity to discuss common misconceptions that might have lead to a large percentage of students picking the incorrect answer. Students are awarded some crazy number of points based on how quickly they picked the correct answer. And when the game is over, you can download an excel spreadsheet showing how each person responded to each question. Give everyone in class credit for being there and making an honest attempt at answering or use this as a quiz (be careful here since students are trying to be the fastest to get the correct answer). Your class will be fun and interactive, and students will learn without ever knowing it. Happy Kahooting!
Blog post by Mary Pat Stein, PhD. Professor Stein is an Associate Chair, Biology and Academic Technology Fellow at California State University, Northridge.
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Active Learning Is Trending in 2016

1/7/2016

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PictureA lecture at the University of Bologna in Italy in the mid-fourteenth century. The lecturer reads from a text on the lectern while students in the back.
If you ask a group of college instructors what their greatest instructional goal is, the most likely answer you’d receive would be: engaging my students. Student engagement can be a serious challenge, particularly in the large, general education courses, which are often situated in old-school lecture halls. Luckily, active learning is trending—and we predict that it will become the norm in the next few years.   

What is active learning? Active learning is an instructional approach that puts the student in the center of the learning. This teaching methodology actively engages the learner and is a contrast with traditional lecture-based approaches where the instructor does most of the talking and students are passive. Some of the many strategies that instructors use to promote active learning include group discussions, peer instruction, problem-solving, case studies, role playing, journal writing, and structured learning groups.

The evidence is overwhelming that employing active learning strategies leads to deeper learning, increased retention and higher performance. Recently, a group of instructors from the University of Washington conducted a meta-analysis of 225 studies on using active learning in STEM courses and found that average examination scores improved by about 6% and failure rates dropped 50% in active learning sections when compared to classes with traditional lecturing.  

Several trends that we see as we travel to campuses across the country bode well for active learning:
  • Courses redesigned for improved outcomes. Increasingly, schools are incentivizing faculty to redesign courses around measurable outcomes, and these redesigned courses tend to employ a greater degree of active learning strategies.
  • Changing the role of assessments. Formative assessments, which are used to drive learning rather than to measure learning, are cropping up across the college curriculum. These can be used to personalize the learning for students, and to guide instructors to continuously improve the teaching. Also, schools are adopting strategies that promote active learning, such as e-portfolios and peer review.
  • Increased use of active learning classrooms. More of these flexible learning environments are cropping up on college campuses, along with professional development on how to use them effectively.
  • Use of mobile devices for learning. Ed tech tools are finally being designed to be mobile responsive. A host of recently launched apps makes it easier for students to use their personal mobile devices to access content and education platforms.
  • Collaborative faculty development. Higher ed faculty development budgets are increasing, and increasingly these budgets are being used for collaborative faculty learning experiences that model these successful active learning strategies.
You’ll be hearing a lot from the team, and me at Café Learn about active learning innovations, ideas, and subject matter experts. Tell us what you think! 
Blog post by Carrie O'Donnell, Café Learn CEO and Co-Founder
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Hello, Instructors!

1/5/2016

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Picture
Welcome back to class! The Café Lean team hopes your holidays were relaxing and enjoyable, and you are rejuvenated for the new year and new term! As you probably know, the first few days of classes are a vital time to present your vision and set expectations for your classroom culture and your course requirements going forward. Also, before diving into content and curriculum, this is a great time to get to know your students. There is no doubt that a personable and interested instructor is more effective engaging with learners than the sage on the stage who sticks to the script of lecturing only. In preparation for your first few days of classes, we thought we’d share some active learning techniques and exercises that will motivate your students and create a culture of engagement.

Introduce Yourself and Get Your Students Talking
It is important to share a little bit about yourself,  let students have a story to go along with your pedagogy, add value and insight to how you came to be standing in front of them, and create an environment of openness and familiarity. If your students know a bit about you and want to learn more about what you have worked hard to be able to share. Tell them things like where you’re from, what your education/teaching background is, what some of your interests outside the classroom are, why you teach, and what keeps you in the classroom. Tell them things like where you’re from, what your education/teaching background is, what some of your interests outside the classroom are, why you teach, and what keeps you in the classroom.  If you feel ambitious, put together slides or a video with images, prompts, and quotes--the more vibrant, the better.
Keep in mind during the first week of the term some students may be ‘shopping’ for classes, adding and dropping courses as they please while looking for the right fit. If they invest in you and your story, they are more likely to stay enrolled. Your introduction to yourself and your course provides a good model for students to open up about themselves, to be more inclined to participate in class, and to ask for help when they need it. Students want to have a community in class and encouraging them to talk and interact with one another as soon as possible will foster this dynamic, so don’t hesitate to ask them questions about themselves.

Here are some cool ideas:

Mapping it out: If it is a geography/history/humanities class, have the students come up and place a thumbtack on where they are from on a big map at the front of the room, this will stimulate talks of diversity and differing world perspectives. If there’s time, ask them to pin a place on the map where they’d like to go, and ask why.

Brick wall exercise: Give your students a notecard when they enter the class and provide them with a brief window of time to decorate their card with their name and whatever they want to visually or textually include about themselves. Then, have the students pin up their square/rectangle cards onto a designated wall in the classroom to mimic a brick wall. Keep this wall up all semester so the students have a reminder of the diversity and togetherness of the class. If the classroom is not yours exclusively, you can do this virtually in a shared Google slides presentation! Have each student add a slide on their own and scroll through the slides to see the diversity of the student body. You can store this within Cafe Learn so students can view it throughout the whole semester.

First day graffiti: Place large flipcharts around the room with one of the below phrases on each and markers in different colors. Invite students to walk around the room and write responses, chat with each other and the teacher as they do. After there are comments on every flip chart, the walk to each one and talk a bit about one or two of the responses. If you run out of time, you can conduct the debriefing during the next session.
Note: This can also be conducted within Café Learn using hashtags to each sentence stem and students answer the prompts electronically via the chat feature.

  1. I learn best in classes where the teacher _______________.
  2. Students in courses help me learn when they ___________.
  3. I am most likely to participate in classes when __________.
  4. Here’s something that makes it hard to learn in a course.
  5. Here’s something that makes it easy to learn in a course.

Best and worst classes: At the front of the class, whether on a projector, a whiteboard, or within Cafe Learn’s chat feature post:  “The best class I’ve ever had” and underneath it “What the teacher did” and below that “What the students did.” On another section write, “The worst class I’ve ever had” and then the same two items beneath. Ask students to share their experiences, without naming the course, department or teacher, and begin filling in their responses based on what they call out. They can do this within  Café Learn using the hashtag feature. If there’s a lull or not many comments about what the students did in these classes, add some descriptors based on your experience with some of your best and worst classes. In 10 minutes or less, two very different class portraits emerge. Move to the best class section of the board and tell students that this is the class you want to teach, but that you can’t do it alone. Together you have the power to make this one of those “best class” experiences.

Simple Ice Breaker Activity:

  1. Have the students introduce themselves to their classmates. Encourage them to meet their seat neighbors. In a smaller class, you might have them introduce each other.
  2. Ask students to write down the answer to the following question on their blank paper (without putting their name on it): “What would encourage you to participate in class discussions? Are there rules that your classmates should follow that ensure everyone feels comfortable? What would they be?” You may have another question you would find more useful in your class on day one. The two techniques below work well with any question.
  3. Call on a reporter: After students have had time to complete the question, call on one person to share. Inevitably that person will feel uncomfortable as will the whole class. Now, let that person know they are not going to share their answer. They have a few minutes to gather group answers. They will simply become a “reporter” for surrounding students, and this should take the pressure off the student. In the meantime, have the other students discuss with their group, explaining you might call on some of them too.
  4. Pass the Paper: After you discuss a few of the student answers, try another technique. Have the students pass their note cards randomly to a neighbor. Each student should exchange a notecard with neighbors several more times until the class responses are well shuffled. Now, ask if some students will volunteer to read an interesting answer on the card they have in front of them. Let students know that if they are comfortable, they can always share their own ideas. Shuffling is one way to make people less self-conscious about sharing.

Have Your Students Review the Syllabus
Too often an instructor passes out the syllabus and expects the students to read it on their own. In reality, they do not. Or, often the instructor wastes valuable class time dictating the terms of the syllabus while the students read along.  Instead, give your class a purpose to read it!  Group students into teams and give them a few minutes to read the syllabus together. Then, using Café Learn’s assessment feature, or a hard copy quiz, have the groups race to complete the quiz. The first group who completes it with a 100% score can receive public recognition or a fun prize…whatever fits your style!  

Let us know what activities you’ve used in the past that have proven to build great learning environments, we’d love to share them with the Café Learn community.
Blog post by Andrew Marcelle, Engagement Manager
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