confusing the teaching strategy with the professor and course content

At the Augustana Campus, a number of us have been using team-based learning (TBL) for a number of years and it is interesting how different students and colleagues respond to its implementation. Most students, when confronted with TBL for the first time are open to it but unsure. At midterm, many students are frustrated with the course but seem to confuse the difficulty of the course content with the teaching strategy blaming the strategy rather than the difficulty of the course. By the time the course ends most students appreciate the incremental and developmental nature of TBL realizing that the daily/weekly requirement to attend to learning the course material ends up making studying for the final exam more efficient because TBL has structured their learning such that they are studying for the final exam throughout the course rather than leaving the learning to cram it in during the week before the exam.

But, there is a very vocal minority who are frustrated with TBL as an instructional strategy and are convinced that their instructor has abandoned them to have to learn it on their own instead of understanding that ultimately, learning does occur on one's own but that TBL has structured class time to practice their learning thereby revealing to students those areas that still need their studious attention. It can be heartbreaking to receive student evaluations of instruction at the end of the term that harshly denigrate the course, instructor, and instructional strategy after working hard to develop appropriate in-class assignments (apps or applications in the language of TBL) for students to learn the course material and accompanying skills through practice under the guidance of both peers and instructor.

I think some of the frustration experienced by students with TBL is misplaced and should actually be placed on the course content itself. I use TBL to teach biochemistry, molecular cell biology and first-year functional biology. Each of these courses was a challenge for students before I began implementing TBL in my courses. It is just that students' frustration with learning difficult course content has shifted from blaming the nature of the course content to blaming the nature of the instructional strategy used to teach the course.

Now, don't misinterpret what I am saying here. Most of my students learn to appreciate what TBL does for them. But the minority who passionately dislike TBL as a learning and teaching strategy is incredibly vocal about it assuming that most students think like them when the data from my student evaluations of teaching make this clearly a false assumption.

The other interesting response is how colleagues respond to my use of TBL as an active learning strategy in my classrooms. Many are very interested, some are little sceptical, and a very few are very annoyed that this teaching and learning strategy persists on our campus. My sense is that these annoyed colleagues are taking the vocal dislike of the passionate few students at face value and accept their opinion to be the common judgement of the inability of TBL to promote student learning outcomes. I find it interesting that colleagues who are rigorous about ensuring that the conclusions they make in their own research are based upon evidence end up making vocal judgements about a teaching strategy on their campus based on hearsay. And when introduced to the vast literature which provides the evidence of its efficacy, dismisses the entire published body of evidence on the basis of a few poor studies.

Part of the issue of a few colleagues negatively responding to TBL being used on their campus is, I am sure, because the ones who first implemented it on our campus, followed by myself who adopted it a few years later were rather vocal in its efficacy making it seem as if those who were not using TBL to teach their courses were somehow teaching with an inferior instructional strategy. There is nothing as infuriating as the zealousness of the recent and naive convert and I confess to being a TBL zealot when I experienced TBL on the road to Damascus back in 2010.

In order to promote active learning on my campus in all of its marvellous and effective forms, I need to rebuild some bridges after unleashing the rhetoric of TBL. Teaching and learning is a wondrous activity to be engaged in. To be part of someone's learning journey and see the lightbulb come on when a concept, principle or skill finally clicks into place and becomes integrated with the mental model of the world ... that is a wondrous thing to behold. And as instructors, when we experience our own "aha" moment while realizing that a different instructional approach works for a different student who was previously struggling to understand, that is our own lightbulb experience that I am so grateful to experience again, and again, and again.

Resources

Carmichael, J. (2009). Team-based learning enhances performance in introductory biology. Journal of College Science Teaching, 38(4), 54–61.

Cooper, K. M., Ashley, M., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). Using expectancy value theory as a framework to reduce student resistance to active learning: A proof of concept. Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education, 18(2).

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (1996). Navigating the bumpy road to student-centered instruction. College Teaching, 44(2), 43–47.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–5.

Huggins, C. M., & Stamatel, J. P. (2015). An exploratory study comparing the effectiveness of lecturing versus team-based learning. Teaching Sociology, 43(3), 227–235.

Mezeske, B. (2004). Shifting paradigms? Don’t forget to tell your students. The Teaching Professor, 18(7), 1.

Michael, J. (2006). Where’s the evidence that active learning works? Advances in Physiology Education, 30(4), 159–167.


Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223–231.

Prince, M., & Weimer, M. (2017, November 2). Understanding student resistance to active learning.

Schwegler, A. F. (2013). From lessons learned the hard way to lessons learned the harder way. InSight: A Journal of Scholarly Teaching, 8, 26–31.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

Spence, L. (2004). “The professor made us do it ourselves.” The Teaching Professor, 18(4), 6.

The Team-Based Learning Collaborative.

Weimer, M. (2013). Responding to resistance. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 199–217). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

Weimer, M. (2014, September 10). “She didn’t teach. We had to learn it ourselves.” Faculty Focus - The Teaching Professor Blog.

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), 8319–20.

student perceptions of active learning (3)

Before I discuss this paper, let me make it clear that I think the balance between lecture and active learning is completely dependent upon the class context. This is not an either/or situation. Teaching involves careful consideration of what our students need to learn and how to best support their learning efforts. Sometimes this will involve telling students something to clear up a misconception. Sometimes this will involve having our students apply or discuss their learning in order to make their learning stick by having them realize that they have not yet deeply learned a concept. I liken the situation to tuning the dial of a radio tuner.

Thus, whenever someone asks me how much active learning they should introduce into their classroom I answer: it depends. It depends upon the student cohort (their experiences and preparation), the year level of the course, the discipline of the course, whether the course is heavy on learning theory, or producing an assignment, what the learning culture is of the particular campus on which you find yourself teaching. All of these things will influence the right balance of lecturing and active learning that happens in your class. What I can say is that if only one is happening in class, then likely not enough of the other is occurring.

Having said that, I really liked this paper (Deslauriers et al 2019). It seems to me to be a well-controlled and thoughtful paper. The authors used a randomized, cross-over design to determine whether students' feeling of learning (FOL) correlate with their actual learning (as assessed with a test of learning - TOL) in an intro physics course taught with active learning vs lecture.

The results clearly indicate that students' FOL was greater when lecture was used whereas their TOL was greater in the active learning environment. This agrees with the Dunning-Kruger effect which suggests that novices have poor metacognition with which to assess their own learning. Their results also agree with other published results which show that students do not appreciate active learning (van Sickle 2016; Smith et al 2011) despite active learning producing better learning outcomes (Freeman et al 2014).

The FOL survey used in this study allowed the authors to also consider the impact of lecture fluency and they found that FOL was positively impacted by fluency. The literature suggests that fluency can inflate students' perceptions of learning as cited in Deslauriers et al (2019).

In a good mixed-methods design, the researchers followed up a subset of the participating students with interviews and they found that students' perceptions of learning were negatively impacted by the struggle required with active learning. When it was pointed out to them that studies show that cognitive effort positively impacts learning, students suggested that knowledge would influence their perception of learning in active learning courses.

So what is impacting the disconnect among novice students' perceptions of their own learning? As suggested above, one is that novices do not have well-developed metacognition. They have difficulties recognizing good judgement and, as a result, have difficulties judging their own learning. In addition, lecture fluency can mislead students into thinking they have learned something when in fact they have not. Finally, students unfamiliar with the cognitive effort required for active learning may resent the effort required to master a body of knowledge.

This resonates with my own teaching experience. Before I implemented active learning in my own classrooms a number of years ago, I was perplexed when students informed me of their frustration with their own learning because I explained things so well in class that they thought they understood what I was teaching but that perception did not translate into good exam performance. It was that student feedback that compelled me to look for other ways of teaching that would make it explicit to students what they did and did not know, what they had and had not learned. Team-based learning is the active learning structure I have implemented in my courses and it works well by hitting a number of the known factors by which active learning promotes student learning (Ambrose et al 2010; Brown et al 2014; Mazur 2009): pre-class preparation, attempting new problems in class, interacting with peers to practice their understanding of what they have learned. What these strategies do is make apparent to students what they do and do not know thereby enabling them to follow up and address the points of misunderstanding they have. In addition, being able to teach each other is a powerful way to cement their learning and create a robust knowledge structure and mental model of what they are learning that integrates with their existing understanding of their world.

So what are we to do to help students accept and embrace active learning despite the cognitive effort required with this teaching strategy? The authors conclude their paper by reporting on the results of an intervention they ran after receiving their study results. They spent time at the beginning of a subsequent term to show students the results of the research and explain how cognitive effort leads to increased learning. This was a 20-minute presentation of the results of the impact of active learning on learning gains and the influence of fluency on perceptions of learning. The researchers observed that students in the Q&A following the presentation were most interested in the idea that FOL and fluency can mislead their judgement about how their learning is progressing. A student survey showed that most students had a more favourable view of active learning as a result of the initial intervention.

These results agree with the earlier Finelli et al (2018) study that suggested that how instructors prepare students for active learning (explain why they are using a particular active learning strategy) goes a long way to mitigate students' resistance to active learning. More significantly in my mind is that the same Finelli study found that how instructors facilitated an active learning activity played a more important role in students response to active learning: being engaged with students during the activity promoted students' perceptions that active learning was enabling their learning.

Please notice, that as I stated above, in both the Finelli and Deslauriers papers it is not that lecturing is completely absent. Read carefully their papers and you will read that they note that mini-lectures were used as necessary. Similar to how I opened this blog post, it is not that lecturing is bad. It is that the injudicious use of lecture is bad. But of course, this can also be applied to active learning. Active learning will not fix bad teaching. Good teachers will be judicious about their use of lecture and active learning and implement either as the context dictates. Having students engaged in active learning for the sake of active learning is not the lesson here. The lesson here is that good instructors will implement lecturing and active learning as required by the particular context and that this will change from year to year, cohort to cohort, class to class, minute to minute.

This is what makes teaching such an interesting challenge as we support our students' learning efforts.

Resources

Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., Norman, M. K., & Mayer, R. E. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Brown, P. C., McDaniel, M. A., & Roediger, H. L. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 201821936.

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. A PDF of this paper is available from Harvard here.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–8415.

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.

Mazur, E. (2009). Farewell, Lecture? Science, 323(5910), 50–51.

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.

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.

student perceptions of active learning (2)

This study (Smith & Cardaciotto, 2011) is similar to the more recent study published by Jenna Van Sickle. Both studies report positive student outcomes with active learning but that students rated the active experience as less positive than the more passive learning experience. So it is interesting that although there is ample evidence to suggest that active learning is good for students, students do not appreciate the experience. The authors liken this to telling children to eat their broccoli because it is good for them.

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

responding to students' resistance to active learning

Our SoTL journal club at Augustana recently met to discuss an interesting article by Finelli, et al 2018 (Reducing student resistance to active learning: Strategies for instructors published in the J Coll Sci Teaching - see reference below). This paper reports the use of a student survey of instructional and facilitation practices and correlated these with students' self-reports of engagement and value of the active learning activities. Interestingly, the study also surveyed instructor’s self-reports of their teaching and facilitation efforts/activities and the study found no difference - teachers and students both perceived the educational setting similarly.

What was interesting to me is that the study found that student resistance to active learning was not high - most students appreciated and engaged in the active learning activities. The difficulty for many instructors working in an environment in which student evaluation of teaching (SET) is used to assess teaching ability, Likert ratings below 4 may be considered to be low. However, this paper reminds us that a SET rating above 3 means that most students appreciate the experience. But excellent teachers may be accustomed to the vast majority of students appreciating the learning experience, not just most students. So maybe a significant finding of this research is that teachers need to be satisfied - find solace - in the fact that active learning reaches most students.

The other interesting finding is that students noted that instructors typically use explanations to alleviate resistance to active learning. That is, that instructors explain to students what is expected of them for the activity and how it will benefit their learning. The statistical analysis in this paper, however, indicates that facilitation efforts may be more effective at reducing student resistance. Facilitation strategies include instructor demeanor toward the students and the activity, inviting students to ask questions about the activity, walking around the room to assist student teams, soliciting student feedback on the activity, and confronting students unengaged in the activity. The last two seemed to have the lowest impact on alleviating student resistance.

So, some good advice backed by evidence for responding to student resistance to active learning: facilitate student engagement with the activities by engaging with the students during the activity and being interested/happy/excited about the activity and how students are interacting with the activity.

There are limitations to the study and I appreciate the authors clearly indicating these. The participating classes were self-selected. The participating classes were not observed by a third party to corroborate the student and instructor ratings of the nature of the class environment. But the authors correctly indicate that some of the key aspects of the study would not have been caught by this triangulation as it is difficult to know/observe/measure students internal environment regarding how they value or emotionally respond to a learning activity. In addition, the low number of classes and student enrollment means that there is the concern of variability within the class being greater than the variability between classes. But this is also difficult to address because different students will perceive the course differently - not all students will observe how the instructor is facilitating their peers’ learning because they themselves are engaged with the learning activity. I am not sure what could have been done to address these limitations except to choose from a wider pool of volunteer classes to try and avoid participant bias. But even then, it is the ones that don’t want to participate that will solve this limitation but you can’t make someone participate in research if they don’t want to.

One set of questions raised by our journal club was should a SET rating of 3 be sufficient to persist with an active learning strategy? Should SETs dictate the learning strategy we implement? Should SETs dictate how faculty evaluation committees reward good teaching? These questions remind me of a large meta-analysis of SETs which concluded with a scathing indictment that I think deserves quoting in full:

In turn, our findings indicate that depending on their institutional focus, universities and colleges may need to give appropriate weight to SET ratings when evaluating their professors. Universities and colleges focused on student learning may need to give minimal or no weight to SET ratings. In contrast, universities and colleges focused on students' perceptions or satisfaction rather than learning may want to evaluate their faculty's teaching using primarily or exclusively SET ratings, emphasize to their faculty members the need to obtain as high SET ratings as possible (i.e., preferably the perfect ratings), and systematically terminate those faculty members who do not meet the standards. For example, they may need to terminate all faculty members who do not exceed the average SET ratings of the department or the university, the standard of satisfactory teaching used in some departments and universities today despite common sense objections that not every faculty member can be above the average. (Uttl, White & Gonzalez, 2017)

We also distinguished between how we, as instructors explain an activity to our students vs facilitating the activity and considered why facilitation might be more effective at reducing student resistance to active learning than explanation? I wonder if this is the difference between attending to the cognitive vs the affective domain of learning? Explaining why a particular activity is good for students gets at their rational side. But resistance, I think, is rarely rational. In contrast, facilitating an active learning experience allows students to directly interact with the instructor and may alleviate any tension or fear that students might have toward publically performing the activity. Facilitating the activity is a way for instructors to join students in the messy business of learning. And I think joining the students in learning rather than standing aloof while they carry out the activity may be critical to students feeling better about risking failure in front of their peers.

Our discussion ended with acknowledging that studies have shown that student engagement promotes student learning outcomes, but oftentimes students are internally engaged with the ideas/content. It is difficult (impossible?) to assess this level of engagement in contrast to the more easily assessed degree of classroom noise. One aspect that instructors who implement active learning need to be careful with is assuming that talking during the activity indicates student engagement and therefore that learning is occurring. Sometimes that noise is actually a discussion of who won the hockey game the night before or which Netflix show is currently being binge-watched. Instructors need to remember that sometimes the best engagement with learning occurs when the class is quiet as a result of students thinking about the implications of what was just discussed.

Like all teaching and learning, context matters.

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.

Uttl, B., White, C. A., & Gonzalez, D. W. (2017). Meta-analysis of faculty’s teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings and student learning are not related. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 54, 22–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2016.08.007

uncovering assumptions of power

The second chapter from Brookfield's Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher is his own critical reflection on his underlying assumptions of the learner-centred classroom. The assumption that learning occurs best when the classroom is democratized and students are empowered to be self-learners results from when the classroom is arranged in a democratic way (a circle) and the instructor sets up class discussion (whole or in groups) such that the teacher is out of the way of students’ learning. Brookfield thinks this approach or understanding of learner-centred teaching is too simple. It assumes that students trust the instructor to not judge students for making mistakes and providing wrong answers to questions. It also assumes that students accept the instructor as a co-learner when, in fact, they place their own unstated assumptions of power and authority on to the instructor. An instructor is carefully watched by students for any indication of expectations of answer quality or routes to problem-solving.

These are issues that have been boiling to the surface for me as I have been developing my implementation of Team-Based Learning in my classroom. The assumption that students can always figure things out on their own is false. Students do need some direction and facilitation. Instruction requires careful attention to the verbal and non-verbal cues from students about what they need (but not necessarily what they want). Walking around the class during group discussion may be viewed as surveillance rather than making oneself available for consultation. The teacher may be removed from immediate dialogue but must always be prepared to intercede when it becomes apparent that an intervention is necessary. This is where an instructor’s intuition cultivated over years of experience comes into play. Teachers need to listen to their inner voice and integrate it with the lenses of colleagues, students, and theory.

My own intuition, informed by theory, experience (students and mine), and colleagues voices, suggests that active learning produces the best learning outcomes, but that it must be tempered by instructional intervention and pedagogical design. This takes work and close analysis (reflection) on our teaching praxis as experienced class to class, course to course, and term to term. Teaching is not the simple implementation of teaching tricks, tips, and strategies. It is a responsive action that is informed by theory, experience, and context. That context is the particular course, term, student cohort, and instructor.

Circles of learning and getting out of the way of students’ learning does make sense - the theory and evidence indicate this. But it does not mean that we should be slaves to technique. How we implement our teaching praxis must be informed by what the students in front of us need at that moment. In addition, as many have written in the SoTL literature, we are more inviting to students’ learning when we explain to them our reasons for implementing the teaching strategies we use in the classroom. I certainly explain this at the beginning of every term, but many of the problems I experience in my TBL classrooms I suspect result from my failure to regularly remind students why I have designed my classes the way I have. We all suffer from cognitive overload and need to be reminded why we structure teaching and learning the way we do.

Resources

Brookfield, S. D. (2017). Uncovering assumptions of power. In Becoming a critically reflective teacher, 2nd ed, p 21-37. San Francisco: CA, Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand. pp xvi, 286.

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.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

Tharayil, S., Borrego, M., Prince, M., Nguyen, K. A., Shekhar, P., Finelli, C. J., & Waters, C. (2018). Strategies to mitigate student resistance to active learning. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(1), 7. 

Weimer, M. (2013). Responding to resistance. In Learner-centered teaching: Five key changes to practice (2nd ed., pp. 199–217). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.

teaching naked: designing college more like a video game

What would make post-secondary education more like a video game? Bowen suggests that similar to video games, higher ed needs to be designed so that failure is not the end of the game - you get to try again. This involves lots of feedback and low stakes assessment in which the challenges are interesting but not impossible. In addition, higher ed could be improved by adopting what many current online games do and allow students to have some creative input into what and how they are learning.

Interestingly, when I have implemented frequent low-stakes quizzing in my classes my students don't like it. Their complaint is that the learning environment in this situation requires them to be always "on" and performing. I think this is a result of students thinking that it is ok to continually put off actual learning until later - students think that it is acceptable practice to cram, gorge, or mass their learning just before the exam because this is what they have done before with success. They become frustrated when that approach to learning no longer works in university and college. But it certainly takes time for students to understand that the only way forward to really learn something is through repeated active practice rather than through repeated passive listening/reading. Of course, listening to a lecture and reading a text can be a part of learning. But for deep learning to occur, it is insufficient.

This fourth chapter in Bown's book also advocates for moving first contact with the material out of the classroom. Assign a reading and then have a low-stakes reading quiz online before class. This allows class time to be used for application of the rote learning. In addition, it allows students to reprocess the knowledge by re-explaining it to others during the in-class applications.

So these are all the elements that I have incorporated with Team-Based Learning in my courses. Why do so many students rebel against it when all of the pedagogical literature suggests that this is the right way to go? The research evidence suggests that what I am doing is correct according to how we understand learning to work and the results of implementing these teaching and learning strategies. I suspect that it has to do with something else that Bowen discusses in this chapter: the understanding that both motivation and emotion impact learning. Students need to care about what they are learning and they also need to feel good about the learning process.

I suspect that my in-class reading quizzes and apps may be perceived by some students as being too difficult - and this may be particularly true in my second-year fall term course. I find that students need to significantly up their game - their approach to learning - when transitioning from high school to first-year university and then again from first-year to second-year. This chapter implies that a poor implementation of active and flipped learning occurs when the challenge is perceived by students as being a little too beyond their abilities and this will impact students' affective domain of learning. Students won't feel good about their learning because if the challenge is too great, they feel that they are never able to master the material being learned. This is difficult because what was pitched at an appropriate level last year may not be appropriate for a current cohort of students. How do instructors figure this out from year to year? In addition, in active learning, the in-class application of students' out-of-class preparation needs to be a little beyond what students can accomplish by themselves, but doable when a team effort is applied to addressing the challenge. This is difficult to balance from course to course and year to year as different cohorts with different experiences and preparation populate our courses.

This chapter also discusses Perry's scheme of intellectual development and how students move through dualism, multiplism to relativism. I like how Kuhn (1999) who Bowen cites rewords these as absolutist, multiplist, and evaluativist. These changes in students' intellectual development will certainly be reflected in students' understanding of how learning works and who is responsible for the learning to occur. Instructors can provide the environment in which learning can occur. But students need to do the actual work of reconstructing their mental models of the world to integrate what they are learning. Otherwise, the learning is superficial and doesn't stick - their understanding of their world will not change until their mental models have changed.

Bowen cites the evidence that brains are still developing during young adulthood: in students' early to late 20s synapses are still being formed. But note that the chapter implies that neurons are growing. I thought they were done growing after childhood and what was changing were synaptic connections.

So bottom line from this fourth chapter: carefully consider how to develop our courses so that students feel challenged but that the rewards for learning are not unobtainable. This requires careful scaffolding of what we expect our students to be able to achieve on their own throughout the course. This is not easy as it will change from year to year and we, as instructors, cannot assume that what worked for last year's cohort of students will work for this year's cohort.

Resources

Bowen, J. A. (2012). Designing college more like a video game. In Teaching naked: How moving technology out of your classroom will improve student learning, Chapter 4. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, an imprint of Wiley. p 75-102.

Felder, R. M., & Brent, R. (1996). Navigating the bumpy road to student-centered instruction. College Teaching, 44(2), 43–47.

Kuhn, D. (1999). A developmental model of critical thinking. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 16–46.

Perry, W. G. (1981). Cognitive and ethical growth: The making of meaning. In A. W. Chickering & Associates (Eds.), The Modern American College (pp. 76–116). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Prince, M., & Weimer, M. (2017, November 2). Understanding student resistance to active learning.

Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2018). Reflections on the resurgence of interest in the testing effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 13(2), 236–241.

Seidel, S. B., & Tanner, K. D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: Origins, options, and opportunities for investigation. CBE-Life Sciences Education, 12(4), 586–595.

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.

Taylor, A. (2011). Top 10 reasons students dislike working in small groups … and why I do it anyway. Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education, 39(3), 219–220.

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.

sources of student resistance to active learning

This article from by Seidel and Tanner in CBE-LSE is an interesting analysis of research into student resistance over the use or introduction of innovative  teaching strategies (i.e. active learning). Seems that it is not resistance to the active learning strategy itself but rather barriers that may develop as a result of instructors struggling to implement the strategy. These barriers may include unintentional actions on the part of the instructor such as being late to class, or not having instructional materials adequately prepared for class. Students take this as an indication of the quality of the learning strategy itself rather than the quality of its implementation.

Some techniques to alleviate student barriers to innovative teaching:

1. Explain why using a particular strategy at the start and at different times throughout the course. 
2. Share the research with students that illustrates its efficacy. 
3. Structure the course such that inter-student interactions are thought by students to be fair. For example, provide a mechanism for peer evaluation. 
4. Instructors need to be present to students. Ensure that your interactions with students inside and outside the classroom are affirming, genuine and occur on a daily basis. Don't hide behind the lecture podium. 
5. Make marking and grading transparent by, for example, providing the markng rubric at the time an assignment is assigned or when an exam is returned. 
6. Vary the instructional strategies used throughout the term to appeal to a wider cross-section of students.

The article also provides some suggestions for how to deal with student resistance when it does arise.

Reference:

Seidel, S.B. and Tanner, K D. (2013). “What if students revolt?”—Considering student resistance: origins, options and opportunities for investigation. Cell Biology Education—Life Sciences Education, 12 (Winter), 586-595. http://www.lifescied.org/content/12/4/586.full