Learning Activities In Courses Research Articles

Teaching for Deeper Understanding and Lifelong Learning

A growing body of research confirms that active approaches to learning offer many advantages over traditional instructional methods, including improved retention of information, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving skills. Content coverage in active-learning courses can be facilitated through careful selection and design of activities that guide student learning. Importantly, activities should engage groups of students in cooperative questioning, problem solving, analytical reasoning, and critical thinking. Focused instruction and reflection on thinking and learning help students develop as intentional learners.

Two approaches for pollution prevention in the chemical engineering curriculum at UASLP

Two experiences related to pollution prevention (P2) curricula are described: An active learning course in environmental engineering (EE) for ChE students, and the development of “modules” for pollution prevention in an international mobility program. The first is approached in collaborative learning oriented to pollution prevention through process and product analysis and life cycle assessment; the second attempts to design and develop up to 17 modules around process integration tools in an exchange program involving eight institutions from three countries of North America, some 12 professors and up to 42 students. Modules support in-class and distance learning using a web-based platform.

Educating interprofessional learners for quality, safety and systems improvement

Most health professionals in training, as well as those in practice, lack the knowledge and skills they need to play an effective role in systems improvement. Until very recently, these competencies were not included in formal (or informal) educational curricula. Interprofessional collaboration – another core competency needed for successful systems improvement – is also inadequately taught and learned. Achieving Competence Today (ACT) was designed as a new model for interprofessional education for quality, safety and health systems improvement. The core of ACT is a four-module active learning course during which learners from different disciplines work together to develop a Quality Improvement Project to address a quality or safety problem in their own practice system. In this paper we describe the ACT program and curriculum model, discuss our strategies for maximizing ACT's interprofessional potential, and make recommendations for the future.

Transplanting Active Learning Abroad: Creating a Stimulating Negotiation Pedagogy Across Cultural Divides

For all of the ongoing attention paid by international relations scholars to reevaluating and improving their pedagogy, the effort to engage classes in new and productive ways can be exceptionally challenging when a western professor travels to a non-western society to teach advanced students. Professor Michael Fowler here explores the use of active-learning techniques in teaching international negotiation and conflict resolution abroad. Drawing especially on the author's experiences in working with officials in Laos and Vietnam, the article provides guidance for fashioning an effective active-learning course abroad, while referencing useful literature on negotiation teaching and scholarship. It assumes that certain readers will not be familiar with active-learning methods, but might want to incorporate them into future courses, and that others will be well-versed in this pedagogy, but will be looking to apply their customary techniques to the new circumstances of teaching advanced students abroad. This article includes material of interest to both groups.

Strategies for Encouraging Active Learning, Interaction, and Academic Integrity in Online Courses

Goal: To provide field-tested recommendations for designing and maintaining online learning environments that encourage active learning, interaction, and academic integrity Courses: Online teaching and learning, distance education, computer-mediated communication, web-based instruction

The effect of active learning on student characteristics in a human physiology course for nonmajors.

This study investigated the effect of active-learning strategies on college students' achievement, motivation, and self-efficacy in a human physiology course for nonmajors. Variables were studied via a quasi-experimental, Solomon four-group design on 141 students at a small west-Texas university. Treatment groups were taught using a continuum-based, active-learning model implemented over the course of a semester. Control groups were taught using traditional didactic lecture methods. To assess the effects of the continuum-based active learning strategies, students were administered a comprehensive physiology content exam, the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire, and attitude surveys. Factorial analyses indicated that the treatment groups acquired significantly more content knowledge and were significantly more self-efficacious than students in the control groups. There were no significant differences in motivation. Attitude surveys indicated that students in both the treatment and control groups demonstrated a positive attitude toward active learning, believed it helped (or would help) them to learn the material, and would choose an active learning course in the future.

Student Performance and Perceptions of a Lecture-based Course Compared With the Same Course Utilizing Group Discussion

Self-directed learning is believed to be an important aspect of the reflective clinical practitioner. This study was a comparison of student learning and student perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness, course difficulty, and amount learned between the active learning and lecture sections of a course. Participants in this study were 170 physical therapist students in 3 sections of a physiology course in the first year of their professional program. Course grades and the results of teacher-course evaluations were compared between a lecture section and an active learning section. The students in the original active learning section were reassessed 1 year later to determine their perceptions of the course. The differences were analyzed using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U tests. Course grades were higher in both active learning sections than in the lecture section. However, the students in both active learning sections perceived that they had learned less than students in the lecture section. Students' perceptions of course and instructor effectiveness were lower in the active learning sections than in the lecture section. There were no differences between the lecture and active learning sections on the students' perceptions of course difficulty. Although they did better in the active learning environment, physical therapist students in a basic sciences course (physiology) in the first year of their professional program perceived that they had learned less in active learning courses. They also had lower perceptions of course and instructor quality.

Providing structure: The critical element

AbstractThis chapter describes the various ways that the level and type of structure can be varied in an active learning course and discusses how to use the manipulation of course structure to meet the challenges presented by a diverse student body.

A Problem Solving Active-Learning Course in Pharmacotherapy

A Problem Solving Active-Learning Course in Pharmacotherapy

Strategies for enhancing learning in the ?blow-off? course

Lower division courses are typically perceived by students as “blow-off” courses. We can overcome this image. This paper contrasts active and passivelearning environments, and describes efforts to create an active, critical learning environment in both “Introduction to Sociology” and “The Family System”-typical lower division courses in Sociology. A review of grade distributions, quantitative course evaluations, qualitative course evaluations, and a survey asking students to subjectively compare the active learning course structure to the “typical” multiple choice format provide evaluation data. Finally, the paper discusses problems in using these innovations.