Active Learning - You Got Questions, We Got Answers

Felder, R. (2013). You Got Questions, We Got Answers 2. Active Learning. Chemical Engineering Education, 47(2), 97-98.

http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/enewsletter.php?msgno=1309

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This reading was originally more for my own professional development teaching wise rather than my PhD but I soon discovered the principles being discussed would apply to my international student program!

Most of this stuff here it seemed like I already knew and agreed with. Active learning helps students retain information and engages more students than normal lectures do. This is most evident with how ENGG1100 and 1200 runs currently.

One really good point that I took from this article is this line here:

"Many students-either for cultural or psychological reasons-are strongly averse to speaking up in class,"

It then goes on and said the effects can be reduced by having students work in groups as they usually don't have as big of an issue talking to 2 or 3 other classmates. Even if they had to report back to the whole class, they would be reporting about the 'groups decision' and not their own which would take the liability off their shoulders! This piece of information could be very useful when designing this international student program as the lack of speaking up is definitely a problem with my cohort that has been identified every year.

It also suggest that you should not call upon volunteers to deliver the groups response as you will commonly get no one willing (experienced this first-hand on Monday). I'm thinking of in my exercises of having an early task which will pick a table leader and this leader will be conveying the responses, perhaps even rotating this task around so other people at the table get a chance at speaking.

I've also got to keep the tasks short to avoid groups finishing fast and ending up side tracked and chatting and also picks up the groups who are lost and gets them back on track.