We’ve all faced it—that moment when a meticulously planned lesson falls flat. You set the stage with clear objectives, a captivating PowerPoint, a class activity, discussion, and an in-class assignment. But during the activity, you notice blank stares and disengaged students. Then comes the dreaded
While many of us know by now that lecture alone is incongruent with student learning, it remains the predominant form of teaching—and understandably so. Pedagogical change is not a natural function in college classrooms, and it is challenging to learn and implement new teaching strategies.
I recently reviewed an active learning workshop, and that’s gotten me wondering about active learning strategies and where we are in our thinking about them. We do know the answers to two questions. First, active learning strategies work—not all the time or uniformly but regularly.
The June-July issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter highlights a study you don’t want to miss. It’s a meta-analysis of 225 studies that compare STEM classes taught using various active learning approaches with classes taught via lecture. “The results indicate that average examination scores improved
