Although many teachers and instructors today agree on the need to promote active involvement of students in their own learning process, there is still considerable disagreement on how best to achieve that worthy goal.
Perhaps the greatest area of difference is the role of content material. There are some teachers who believe learning activities should be structured to allow students the opportunity to discover important content on their own, with minimum input from the teacher, if any.
Others, however, believe the teacher still has the responsibility to determine and present content to be learned, but to structure content presentations in ways to promote active involvement. They start with the premise that the content of a well developed lecture is a valuable resource, and serves as a starting point for finding active learning opportunities.
Almost all lectures have an inherent structure that can be broken into content "chunks." Contemporary brain-based research tells us the brain learns in bursts and needs time between bursts to rest.
The obvious implication of this finding is to break up a lecture into its component parts, allowing comprehension time between each part. Many teachers alternate brief content presentations with group discussion activities or individual assignments.
However, one of the drawbacks of this is the time required for active involvement. The response of some teachers is that they simply have too much content to cover to allow for extensive group discussions or individual assignments during class time.
For some content, there may be a way to maximize involvement without taking up too much time. The idea is to look at the structure of your lecture notes for opportunities to turn portions of content presentation into group activities.
For example, suppose you are teaching a class on coaching methods in the workplace. The first section in the lecture is a straight factual presentation of four different approaches to coaching and counseling. In the second section, the teacher presents the advantages and disadvantages of each method.
The second section of that lecture can easily be turned into a group discussion activity. You have explained the basics of each method, but you leave it up to the students to draw on their own experience and understanding to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
The time it would take to present that portion of the lecture goes into the group discussion. Whenever possible group discussions should be followed by a reporting period where each group shares its conclusions.
It is a simple matter here for an instructor to add the content the group may have missed. However, rather than simply providing the additional input, good teachers can use questioning techniques to try to elicit the additional thoughts from the class.
Using lecture content as a resource for developing active learning activities is not easy and requires an investment of time and creative thinking from the instructor. If you believe in transitioning from traditional teacher-centered learning that relied on extensive content presentations towards student-centered learning where learners get actively involved, it will be well worth the effort.
Dr Bryan A. West is the owner and manager of Fortress Learning ( http://www.fortresslearning.com.au ), an Australian Registered Training Organization who consistently generates greater than 90% student satisfaction ratings with their range of online courses. Learn more by visiting http://www.fortresslearning.com.au.
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