The Van Sickle study considered a math course whereas the Smith & Cardaciotto broccoli study considered introductory psychology. Smith & Cardaciotto state at the end that active learning activities need to be embedded in sound pedagogy and not simply involve students “doing” something. I am not sure why they tacked this on at the end of their paper as their study design did not address this at all. It is an important consideration, but their study design has nothing to say about this.
A limitation of this study in terms of it being integrated with other active learning studies is that the authors interpreted active learning as any activity that engaged the students cognitively. Thus, their active learning activities were done outside of class rather than the more typical understanding that active learning involves transforming what happens in the traditional didactic lecture - the activities happen inside of the classroom. They make the comparison that what they are doing is similar to the sciences which have a didactic lecture associated with an active lab or tutorial. What is interesting is that most of the published research suggests that active learning in science classes regardless of an active lab or tutorial will promote student learning outcomes. This broccoli study is odd this way thinking that active learning outside of class will do the trick. And even their two-course modules on brain and behaviour showed no differences between the content review and the active learning conditions which they suggest is because those course sections use more active learning during class meetings.
Another limitation is that they did not specifically consider student learning outcomes but rather only student perceptions of their own learning. They acknowledge this and request that subsequent studies specifically consider student learning outcomes as exam or grade results. They cite literature that indicates that students self-reports of learning correlates with actual learning outcomes and so can indicate an impact on student learning. But still, this study did not specifically study this. The reason they give is that the different instructors administered different exams and thus were not comparable.
What I find odd is that the authors make the assumption that students can accurately assess their learning and thus student perception surveys can indicate student learning outcomes to some extent though they do explain that this needs to be studied directly. The reason that I find this odd is that although the authors cite a study indicating the reliability of student perception reports of their learning, the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that weak students over-estimate their learning whereas good students under-estimate their learning. So it does not suggest that student self-reports are reliable measures of their own learning.
More recent students (e.g. Finelli et al, 2018) suggest that the manner in which instructors explain and facilitate the learning activities in their classroom can go a long way to mitigate students' resistance to learning
Resources
Finelli, B. C. J., Nguyen, K., Demonbrun, M., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Husman, J., … Waters, C. K. (2018). Reducing student resistance to active learning: Strategies for instructors. Journal of College Science Teaching, 47(5), 80–91.Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.77.6.1121
Smith, C. V, & Cardaciotto, L. (2011). Is active learning like broccoli? Student perceptions of active learning in large lecture classes. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, 11(1), 53–61. Retrieved from https://josotl.indiana.edu/article/view/1808/1805
Van Sickle, J. R. (2016). Discrepancies between student perception and achievement of learning outcomes in a flipped classroom. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(2), 29–38. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i2.19216
Wieman, C. E. (2014). Large-scale comparison of science teaching methods sends clear message. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8319–8320. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1407304111
