Although many professors across campus already use active learning in various ways, broad-based training is essential for making a successful transition throughout the core sciences.
“My vision is for everyone to get excited about active learning and for a huge number of faculty members to pursue it,” Dale says. “We plan to provide intense and ongoing mentoring for faculty,” Lyford says.
The Science Initiative’s Learning Actively Mentoring Program (LAMP) includes the hiring of two instructional facilitators— one in the physical sciences and one in the life sciences. These individuals will be accomplished in active learning techniques and will train and mentor other faculty, as well as demonstrate active learning in their own classes.
“We are planning weeklong summer institutes, where the mentors will help develop academic programs for faculty members,” Lyford says. “Then, during the course of the year, the mentors will visit the professors’ classrooms to give feedback and ideas.”
There will also be a weekly faculty development program and seminar series, as well as bi-weekly reading series for faculty members and graduate students.
Because graduate students also teach undergraduates, they play a key role in the program. All of the new graduate students and faculty members and most of the existing faculty members in the Science Initiative’s core sciences will be trained in active learning strategies by 2022.
The Science Initiative’s active learning emphasis will also have a transformational impact for College of Education students studying to be K–12 teachers.
“We can help reshape K–12 education in our state by modeling good instruction in our classrooms,” Lyford says. “Every single K–12 pre-service teacher goes through these science classes, so we are planning an undergraduate piece of LAMP, where we will train pre-service teachers in their junior and senior years on active learning and pay them to help facilitate these courses.”
“UW populates most schools in the state with teachers,” Brown says. “This aspect of the Science Initiative will provide a transformation, over time, of how teaching takes place in Wyoming.”
UW will also facilitate a statewide active learning conference in February 2016.
While understanding active learning techniques takes time—as well as creativity to implement—professors using the methods say they wouldn’t go back to lecturing.
“It takes time as an instructor, but it’s more engaging for us too,” Lyford says.
“I love teaching this format,” Kobulnicky agrees. “I’ve been doing it for five years now, and it is more fun for me because I get to be involved in all aspects of the course in a meaningful way that the traditional model doesn’t allow.”
Lyford sums up the many benefits of making the switch to active learning: “Data shows that we can increase student success, we can increase attendance, and we can increase learning comprehension and their ability to think at higher levels. We’ll be producing better students for jobs, graduate school and teaching. It won’t be long before people look to us for core science education.”
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