I have been experimenting with different teaching methods for four
years at a community
college. Some of my experiences with active learning were just as
negative as Ludwik
Kowalski's, but I've reached different conclusions.
(1) Students enjoy a having a variety of activities, especially during
classes that
are 1.5 hours or longer. They react badly to 1.5 hours of straight
lecturing, or to 1.5
hours of an activity like the Peer Instruction method. The only
difference is that they
don’t complain to the dean about ceaseless chalk and talk because it’s a
form of torture
that happens to be socially accepted ;-)
(2) The level of difficulty is critical. When a lecture is too easy or
too hard,
students will tune out and suffer in silence. When an active learning
technique is too
hard (we seldom seem to think up ones that that are too easy!) they
become demoralized and
outraged. The only way to develop a set of effective activities is by
trial and error, so
it’s a really bad idea to try to dive in to someone else’s
active-learning method all at
once. (But feel free to test drive the discussion questions in my free
online book at
www.lightandmatter.com.)
(3) I agree entirely with Pete Schoch that active learning versus
chalk-and-talk is
not about high standards versus low standards. There are many
constraints that keep our
courses at a prescribed level. Even the boosters of specific methods
(e.g. Peer
Instruction) only claim rather small gains in performance, and these are
on tests whose
format and method are well matched to the method of instruction.
(4) Methods that assume the students will read the book beforehand will
only work if
the book is worth reading. If the book introduces work by stating baldly
that “work is
defined as W=Fd,” then the students’ minds have been poisoned against
any serious
conceptual discussion of work.