Lecture-Free Classroom: Fully Active Learning on Moodle

Abstract

Contribution: This article shows that today’s learning technologies have the potential to make lectures unnecessary by supporting student’s active learning in the classroom. Background: Despite worries about their pedagogical effectiveness, lectures remain the main instructional method in university classrooms. Introducing active learning into the classroom can be difficult due to class sizes and the challenge of providing appropriate scaffolding to individual students. This article shows that a thoughtful deployment of today’s learning technology can help in structuring a whole course as a set of activities, which can improve students’ engagement in the classroom. Intended Outcomes: With this full engagement in the classroom, students’ affective and learning attitudes as well as their learning performance are expected to improve. Application Design: Moodle was used to design learning activities for second-year students taking a digital logic design course in an electrical and computer engineering program. Throughout the semester, the students used the class time entirely to complete these activities and reflect on them. The instructor’s role in the classroom was limited to interaction with individual students or teams to clarify any questions. He did not give any lectures during the term. Findings: A total of 103 students took this course in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019. The students showed a strong acceptance of the presented instructional design. Their evaluation of individual learning activities was consistently positive and their performance in the final exam has improved considerably compared to the previous offerings of the course.