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Improving Quality of Science Teacher Training in European Cooperation
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E-learning
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Plan, organize and deliver an active learning project
Plan, organize and deliver an active learning project
- be able to define active learning;
- know the characteristics of active learning;
- know the difficulties and hindrances of active learning;
- be able to name possible active learning strategies;
- know the peculiarities of certain active learning strategies;
- be able to use active learning strategies to prepare their own project;
- be able to use active learning strategies in their work with students;
- students will implement they knowledge and skills in lesson planing and perfoming.
Like many terms used to describe teaching or learning, active learning defies simple definitions. The following excerpts of definitions offer some insight into what others think active learning is. As an exercise in active learning, try looking critically at these phrases and the full text definitions that follow them.
- "Active Learning" is, in short, anything that students do in a classroom other than merely passively listening to an instructor's lecture. This includes everything from listening practices which help the students to absorb what they hear, to short writing exercises in which students react to lecture material, to complex group exercises in which students apply course material to "real life" situations and/or to new problems. http://www.texascollaborative.org/activelearning.htm
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Learning in an active search for meaning by the learner--constructive knowledge rather than passively receiving it, shaping as well as being shaped by experience... To stimulate an active search for meaning, faculty [must]:
- expect and demand student participation in activities in and beyond the classroom;
- design projects and endeavors through which students apply their knowledge and skills. http://www.myacpa.org/pub/documents/taskforce.pdf
- Active learning refers to techniques where students do more than simply listen to a lecture. Students are DOING something including discovering, processing, and applying information. Active learning "derives from two basic assumptions: (1) that learning is by nature an active endeavor and (2) that different people learn in different ways" (Meyers and Jones, 1993). Research shows greater learning when students engage in active learning. It is important to remember, however, that lecture does have its place and that you should not do active learning without content or objectives. The elements of active learning are talking and listening, writing, reading, and reflecting.
- Silberman, M. 1996 (Active Learning: 101 Strategies to Teach Any Subject) When learning is active, students do most of the work. They use their brains...studying ideas, solving problems, and applying what they learn. Active learning is fast-paced, fun, supportive, and personally engaging...To learn something well, it helps to hear it, see it, ask questions about it, and discuss it with others. Above all, students need to 'do it'--figure things out by themselves, come up with examples, try out skills, and do assignments that depend on the knowledge they already have or must acquire.
- Glasgow 1996 (Doing Science): Active learners energetically strive to take a greater responsibility for their own learning. They take a more dynamic role in deciding how and what they need to know, what they should be able to do, and how they are going to do it. Their roles extend further into educational self-management, and self-motivation becomes a greater force behind learning.
- Modell and Michael 1993 (Promoting Active Learning in Life Science Classrooms):We define an active learning environment as one in which students individually are encouraged to engage in the process of building their own mental models from the information they are acquiring. In addition, as part of the active learning process, the student should constantly test the validity of the model being constructed.
- Davis TAC Handbook: Active learning is an approach to learning that involves the student 'as his/her own teacher.' Keep in mind that it is an approach, not a method
- Finding classroom strategies that get students more involved in the subject matter - that is, promoting 'active learning'. The notion of active learning has developed over the last dozen years or so, said Licklider, among cognitive psychologists who note that learning occurs best through social interaction and less competition. Active learning promotes a variety of methods, including students working together in and outside of class, as well as class lectures. http://www.iastate.edu/general/Inside/1996/1101/facForum.html
- Although the ultimate responsibility for learning rests with the students, good teaching encourages students to put forth more effort, gives opportunities for practice, and provides feedback on performance and freedom in learning. These characteristics are the essential elements of active learning. Active learning is engaging one's self (the learner) with the material being learned. In the classroom, the teacher teaches the student how to function and how to get the task done within the context of the discipline, the course, the class. It distributes the learning responsibility among the students and the teacher. http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/projects/tlr/active.html
- Active learning isn't a new idea. It goes back at least as far as Socrates and was a major emphasis among progressive educators like John Dewey. And yet, if you peer into many classrooms, we seem to have forgotten that learning is naturally an active process. It involves putting our students in situations which compel them to read, speak, listen, think deeply, and write. While well delivered lectures are valuable and are not uncommon, sometimes the thinking required while attending a lecture is low level comprehension that goes from the ear to the writing hand and leaves the mind untouched. Active learning puts the responsibility of organizing what is to be learned in the hands of the learners themselves, and ideally lends itself to a more diverse range of learning styles. http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/active/ActiveLearningk-12.html
- Surprisingly, educators' use of the term active learning has relied more on intuitive understanding than a common definition. Consequently, many faculty assert that all learning is inherently active and that students are therefore actively involved while listening to formal presentations in the classroom. Analysis of the research literature (Chickering and Gamson 1987), however, suggests that students must do more than just listen: They must read, write, discuss, or be engaged in solving problems. Most important, to be actively involved, students must engage in such higher-order thinking tasks as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within this context, it is proposed that strategies promoting active learning be defined as instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing. http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/91-9dig.htm
- The objective of active learning is to give an opportunity to students to integrate new information with terms or models in a mental scheme, through wording, hearing, and practice. In order to be provoked students’ activity, methods like brainstorming, discussion, or work in small groups can be used. A student can gain experience for active learning through making reports, writing exercises, through individual work, or work on a project. http://www.lib.utexas.edu/is/publications/active.html
- Most students have spent the majority of their school career in passive learning environments in which faculty were disseminators of information, and students were required to memorize information or use specified algorithms to solve problems. In an active learning environment, students are encouraged to engage in the process of building and testing their own mental models from information that they are acquiring. In such a learner-centered environment, faculty become facilitators of learning, and students become active participants, engaging in a dialog with their colleagues and with the instructor. http://www.uth.tmc.edu/apstracts/1996/advances/March/7s.html
Research shows that effectiveness of learning process is greater if active learning is included in it. No matter which is the school subject, when active learning is compared to traditional methods of learning (such as lecture, for example), it becomes clear that using this method (active learning) students learn much more things, their knowledge is steady, and what they have learned brings them satisfaction. Active learning lets students learn with the help of an instructor, or with the help of other students. And they really have greater will to work together rather than work alone.
Active learning techniques are not educational magic bullets. Of course some of your students may not be willing to abandon their passive roles. But between those who are self-motivated and those who choose to sink, there is most likely a large middle group who, with some facilitating from you, will be active learners and markedly improve their performance and long-term command of the material.
The obstacle to integrating active learning techniques into your class is contained within Confucius’s aphorism: I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
Active learning gives to students the opportunity to be engaged in training. According to Bonwell and Eison (1991) students are involved in many activities that are much more different and much more interesting than just listening. And(in active learning) students are less related to the place which is the source of information(for example, school). They develop their skills for learning , reading , writing, and discussion. And of greatest importance is the fact that they develop their own opportunities and abilities by themselves.
Some active learning techniques take little faculty preparation and may be done spontaneously; others require much more preparation. Active learning techniques can occur in class or outside of class (e.g., computer simulations, internships, WWW assignments, class Internet discussion lists, independent study research). Active learning can be used with all levels of students from first year through graduate students. Teaching a mass class does not prohibit the use of active learning techniques; in fact, they may be especially important to promote interest and learning in a mass class.
Active learning is used on all levels of training-from the first to the last year at school and university.
While the activities described here might seem appealing, they often seem appealing for other instructors or other disciplines–but not for our own. That is, a certain amount of internal resistance sometimes sets in. Trying new activities might seem like inviting disaster, especially when it means giving up the control that a lecturer commands. And there is always the pressure to cover more and more material, so that activities involving students–activities taking up classroom time–seem wasteful. There is also a kind of institutional pressure not to experiment with our teaching, since any experimentation takes thinking about–thereby taking time away from our research and writing. Incentives and even collegial support to improve or alter our teaching are often nonexistent. And also, of course, is the fear of trying something new and failing–a fear of taking risks in the classroom.
No matter that this approach of teaching requires teachers who use it to make great efforts and to have a good organization of what they do, they believe that all these things widen their horizon and improve their work. When students are part of active learning in class or while doing homework, etc. they are obliged to add to their own knowledge, understanding, and skills. If students remain passive, there is a great probability for their knowledge to be superficial. With active learning students are able to learn more and with greater attention and consistency; to ask questions frequently, and to share about difficulties they encounter, to express themselves well, and to make judgments.
- Misgivings that a teacher could waste time in a class while trying to make students work actively, and in that way some themes of the syllabus to remain not worked out;
- Fear that a teacher could lose control over students in the process of their active work;
- Many students do not like active learning. They refuse to work in groups and to do what they have to about the given tasks; they even protest;
- If students are given an opportunity to work collaboratively on a project or to do some other task, there is a possibility for some students to remain passive and to take advantage of the work of their classmates; the passive students could get a mark that they do not actually deserve.
- Some groups of students do not work well, the results of their efforts are superficial and unfinished, and some members of the group complain about the poor work of other members. The latter could find individual examination difficult, because then they have to present the result, or to explain why they have chosen exactly this way to solve the given problem.
- Another hindrance to active learning is giving more time for preparation and giving help to students and also possible difficulties which arise while working in a class of many students – lack of materials, instruments, and sources of information.
Regardless of the hindrances enlisted, and regardless of the teacher who does not feel ready for this work and does not have the skills needed, active learning could be used successfully if, in advance, the teacher has a carefully made detailed plan about it.
Such strategies are: A written answer to a question , but for more than a minute; homework; competition; discussion, inquiry; students’ correction of their own answers, hand-outs, puzzle, crosswords, speaking, puzzle, work in pairs ,work on certain matrix, debates, work on a project, etc.
- What are some common themes in the definitions?
- How do the definitions differ from each other?
- Which definitions most closely resemble your prior conceptions of active learning?
- In your view, what determines the significance of the use of AY as a pedagogic approach? Why would you choose to use it?
- Which of the active learning hindrances listed are most common and most reasonable?
Questions about understanding of active learning are discussed. There is a presentation of some outlines of physics lessons regarding presented in them methods and techniques for active learning. Students estimate together their own presentations and the outlines of the lessons they have prepared.
- Decide if the outlines of physics lessons prepared by you are due to the requirements for organization of active learning.
- Are there enough details about teachers’ activity and about students’ activity in organization of active learning in the outlines of the given physics lessons?
- Give examples of units from the physics syllabus about which techniques for active learning could be used?
There are different definitions of active learning. Learning is successful when students take active part in the training .Then they take greater responsibility for the objectives and content of training and develop a motivation and skills for self-education. There are a number of hindrances to organization of active learning; these hindrances can be overcome by means of purposeful and detailed preliminary preparation. A teacher could use different strategies for organizing students’ active learning.
- Is it true that active learning refers only to students’ activity?
- What is the relationship between the training via working on projects, differentiation, and individualization of a teaching process and the active learning?
http://attf.iu.edu/about/finrpts/cooney.html
http://www.calstatela.edu/dept/chem/chem2/Active/
- McKinney Kathleen, Cross Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Professor of SociologyIllinois State University, http://www.teachtech.ilstu.edu/additional/tips/newActive.php
- Bonwell Charles C and James A. Eison, Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom, http://www.ntlf.com/html/lib/bib/91-9dig.htm
- Starke Diane, Professional Development Module on Active Learning, http://www.texascollaborative.org/activelearning.htm
- Dufresne Robert J, Strategies for Use in Science Courses, http://www.bedu.com/Publications/UMASS.pdf