Learning In Large Classrooms Research Articles

ADAPTATION OF A CLASSROOM OBSERVATION PROTOCOL FOR ACTIVE LEARNING

In our work, we are focusing on the use of classroom observation to provide feedback on instructional space design. An initiative to redesign teaching space began a decade ago at a large, research-intensive institution. In September 2018, a large-scale (477 seat) active learning classroom became operational. The affordances of this space are intended to enable active teaching and learning in large classes. However, it is difficult to assess how successful this space is for active learning. A multi-year study has been undertaken to observe teaching practice in situ, with the goalof developing design principles for instructional space and technology that support the development, design, and implementation of teaching activities. Existing teaching observation protocols do not fully capture the interaction between the instructor and the space because such protocols were generally intended for other purposes. The goal is to develop a protocol that captures activities that are both intrinsic and extrinsic to teaching. This paper describes the development and use of an observation protocol. The core of the protocol is the wellknownTeaching Dimensions Observation Tool (TDOP). The scope of the TDOP is extended to active learning activities drawing from the Active Learning Classroom Observation Tool (ALCOT). The resulting extended protocol, TDOP+, was used for coding both live and recorded classroomobservations in the Winter 2020 term. This extended protocol allows the researchers to capture information that characterizes the intersection of pedagogy, space, and technology through Activity Theory. In future work, the data gathered through observations will be analyzed using theDifferentiated Overt Learning Activities (DOLA) framework, to provide insight into what types of teaching activity happens in a large-scale active learning classroom across STEM education and how active learning in large classrooms compares to pedagogy in other spaces.

From swimming pool to collaborative learning studio: Pedagogy, space, and technology in a large active learning classroom

To promote student learning and bolster student success, higher education institutions are increasingly creating large active learning classrooms to replace traditional lecture halls. Although there have been many efforts to examine the effects of those classrooms on learning outcomes, there is paucity of research that can inform the design and implementation process. This study investigates how spatial and technological features of a large collaborative classroom support active learning based on the Pedagogy-Space-Technology framework. The findings from our study suggest short lecture and class-wide discussion are essential in framing learning content before group activities, and connecting group outputs to the learning content after group activities. Through interviews, surveys, and focus groups, we found that-while small group activities are generally well-supported in large active learning classroomsfacilitating short lecture and class-wide discussion is key to the success of active learning in large classrooms. Technology should be carefully laid out in the space to accommodate those activities. Specific design and implementation suggestions and implications are provided.

Collaboration, not oration: Tips for engaging students and promoting active learning in large classrooms

Students state that traditional lectures are boring, and studies show that traditional lectures are ineffective and result in higher student failure rates than in active classroom settings. Unfortunately, large class sizes at many institutions prohibit some of the active learning strategies that are feasible in small classrooms. Moreover, increased time constraints of faculty members further limit one’s ability to assess individual learning in the classroom. Here, I demonstrate multiple techniques to incorporate into traditional lecture formats that increase student engagement, provide immediate assessment of lecture material, deepen critical thinking, and motivate student learning—all without increasing the time demands of the instructor.

Using Flipped Classroom Approach to Explore Deep Learning in Large Classrooms

Using Flipped Classroom Approach to Explore Deep Learning in Large Classrooms

What does it mean to teach thinking in China? Challenging and developing notions of ‘Confucian education’

The Confucian tradition of education is frequently referred to in ways that make it seem antithetical to the aim of teaching thinking. ‘Confucian education’, as depicted in the literature, implies rote learning in large classrooms where students learn not to question authority. However, in what is referred to in the literature as the ‘paradox of Chinese education’, it seems that what appears to many western observers to be rote learning often leads to depth understanding. In this paper we use critical literature review and some analysis of empirical data to argue that this paradox might be an effect of the continuance in Chinese education of a distinctively Confucian approach to teaching thinking. Confucius, we argue, taught thinking in the form of inner dialogue between multiple voices in the context of relationships and responsibilities. Having made the scholarly and theoretical case for this form of teaching thinking, we then offer illustrations of it, taken from recent classroom research in China. We conclude that the Confucian approach to teaching thinking that we uncover still survives and is a significant part of the Confucian heritage. It may have been overlooked in the past simply because it does not fit easily with more demonstrative and individualistic traditions of teaching thinking familiar in the West. Our aim is to correct a common misinterpretation of Confucian education and so perhaps to open the way to developing a more truly Confucian approach to education that is appropriate for the needs of the 21st Century.

Using an Online Student Response System in Small Group Teaching: A Pilot Study

Student response systems have shown to be an effective tool in addressing some of the challenges of teaching and learning in large classrooms. Traditional student response systems are based on clic...

Exploring the potential of mobile phones for active learning in the classroom

Research has shown that educational technology can broaden and enhance the use of active learning in large classrooms. An educational technology platform often relies on students to bring laptops or specialized wireless devices like clickers to interact through the system. Mobile phones are an attractive alternative, as most students already possess them, they have more capabilities than dedicated clickers, and yet are small enough to minimize interference with note taking on a classroom desk.This paper presents the design and use of a mobile phone extension to Ubiquitous Presenter, which allows students to submit solutions to active learning exercises in the form of text or photo messages. In an exploratory study, students found that text messaging worked well for exercises with multiple choice or short answers. Entering symbols common to computer science was difficult. Many problems were more suitable to photo messaging of a handwritten answer, although image quality must be managed. The phone's small size left space for the use of a notebook. The students had concerns about the message charges that would accrue in use. In conclusion, we offer recommendations to instructors and system designers interested in leveraging mobile phones to increase communication in the classroom.

Collaborative Learning in the Classroom: A Guide to Evaluation

Over last decade collaborative learning has become an important method for college English teachers, who now realize that their own education rarely taught them how colleagues work together learn and make meaning in discipline, and who have rejected philosophically kinds of approaches teaching that isolate learners instead of drawing them together. In addition, problems for education in seventies and eighties-the changes in student populations, growth in number of nontraditional learners in collegiate body, alienating nature of learning in large classrooms with too many students, acknowledged decline of freshmen entry-level skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking-these and other challenges an earlier educational paradigm have shaken our faith in conventional teaching strategies and have called question our obsession with major metaphor for learning over last three hundred years, the human mind as Mirror of Nature. As Ken Bruffee has put it, this old metaphor insists that teachers give students as much information as they can to insure that their mental mirrors reflect reality as completely as possible and also insists that we help our students through exercise of intellect or development of sensibility, sharpen and sensitize their inner eyesight (Liberal Education 98). In this ground-breaking essay, Bruffee, drawing upon works of Thomas Kuhn, L. S. Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, M. L. J. Abercrombie, and Richard Rorty, advances an alternate concept of knowledge as socially justified belief. According this concept, knowledge depends on social relations, not on reflections of reality. Knowledge is a collaborative artifact (103) that results from intellectual negotiations (107). Bruffee explores curricular implications of knowledge collaboratively generated, always with one eye on classroom and other on philosophical underpinnings of new paradigm. But Bruffee's model, built on delicate and necessary tension between theory and practice, may not, I suspect, have guided much of what teachers are calling collaborative learning today. I mention this suspicion out of my recent investigations into issue of assessment generally as force in postsecondary