Active Learning Impact: Learning gains are 45 percent for active learning versus 22 percent for lecture. Retention is 95 percent for active learning compared to 80 percent for lecture. Pass/fail rate for students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning. Improved attendance is 90 percent for active learning compared to 74 percent for lecture.
Active learning can take many forms depending on the size of the class, number of students and subject area, but basic principles include breaking students into small groups and having them actively participate via discussion, response and problem solving.
“Active learning will transform entrylevel science education to utilize a form of learning that more students find compatible and agreeable,” Brown says.
“Active learning is more intuitive,” agrees sophomore Logan Jensen of Greybull, Wyo., an astronomy and astrophysics major who took Professor Kobulnicky’s General Physics I course his first semester. “He had the class divided up into four- or five-person groups, and you’d work together with those at your table. Right away, after a short introduction, we’d be thrown into a few example problems to work on in small groups. After we’d done the mathematics behind what we were going to learn, then we got to do a lab and actually see whatever we were learning that day implemented. So you got to do all the aspects of the lesson at once. It makes it something you can see and relate to.”
The class would traditionally be taught with three separate components—lecture, lab and discussion, which Jensen experienced in General Physics II and found more disjointed.
“I thought the active learning approach was a good way to do it for everyone,” he says. “It benefits people who struggle more with learning but also helps the people who are catching on quickly.”
In addition, active learning also benefits underrepresented students. “What you see in studies on active learning is that those who benefit most are the underrepresented students—first-generation, minorities and women,” Lyford says. “Everybody benefits, but who benefit most are those students that frankly are the groups we’ve been losing from the STEM—science, technology, engineering and mathematics—pipeline.
“I also found in my research that students get more interested in the subject,” he continues. “They’re more likely to take another class in the STEM areas.”
Top students also benefit. “Being engaged in their learning, you’re able to push them harder in their critical thinking and problem solving because that’s what you’re doing in class,” Lyford says.
For laboratory classes and studio physics at the freshman and sophomore level, the new Michael B. Enzi STEM Facility will provide customized, state-of-the-art learning spaces.
“I’m very excited to teach in the new Enzi STEM Facility because we’ll have expanded space to do studio physics for up to 56 students,” Kobulnicky says. “Among other features, the room will have white boards around all the walls, where groups can go to work problems together.”
However, current lecture sections in biology, chemistry and physics that serve more than 40 students lack appropriate spaces to hold active learning classes.
“It’s hard to take existing spaces and retrofit them for active learning, particularly tiered lecture halls,” Lyford says. “It’s a lot easier to facilitate when it’s a flexible space and one where students are already seated in groups. In the Science Initiative, we’re proposing four classrooms in the new building (see page 24 for more on the new building). They would complement the Enzi STEM Facility, where we’ve developed new teaching laboratories for undergraduate students.”
Due to lack of space, Lyford teaches his current Life 1003 Current Issues in Biology class in the basement of Washakie Dining Center.
“In the new science building, we’re planning four different-sized classrooms for 200, 150, 100 and 50 students,” he says. “They would be single floor versus tiered, and instead of students facing forward, there would be round tables for nine students each with sub-clusters of three students within that, each with a form of technology, such as a tablet. They’d all have a monitor on the wall.”
This setup will encourage discussion and problem solving in groups, and students and the professor can share things on the monitors. In addition, learning outside of class will be optimized by taking advantage of technology for things like short instructional videos, explanations or animations of concepts, as well as questions and quizzes.
|
2/3 |