Successful Active Learning Research Articles

The differential impact of active learning on children's memory.

Successful active learning has often been quantified with respect to either the efficiency of information search or the accuracy of subsequent recall. In this article, we explored the hypothesis that children's memory is influenced by the types of information search strategies they implement, which may emphasize different aspects of the task stimuli. As a consequence, younger children's well-documented search inefficiency may turn out to be advantageous and result in better memory for some aspects of the task. In the current experiment, 5- to 10-year-old children (N = 124) played (active condition) or observed an agent play (passive condition) 20-questions games, and were then tested for their memory of several different aspects of the game both immediately after and a week later. Children showed overall improved recall in the active condition. Search efficiency was positively related to recall of the game's solution, but did not significantly impact performance on the other memory tests. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Photovoice: An active learning tool with community nursing students.

To assess nursing students' experiences of using photovoice as a pedagogical approach to active learning in the community. A descriptive design with a cross-sectional mixed-method questionnaire was used with 108 students following an educational activity, in which their communities were photographed and the impact of the pandemic on vulnerable populations was reflected. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used to analyze the data. Seventy eight percent of the students felt that photovoice was an interesting and useful tool for nurses, 89% affirmed it helped stimulate reflection on social and health inequities in times of pandemic, 82% described that it developed many emotions and feelings and 86% would like to disseminate their photographs directly to stakeholders, citizens, and politicians. Three themes were identified in the data: "stimulate critical reflection", "develop emotional skills", and "encourage action". Photovoice is a successful active learning pedagogical approach that engages nursing students to develop critical awareness while connecting with their communities, with the real world. It fosters students' sensitivity and motivation and encourages them to take action. Teachers need to introduce new scaffolds for active learning, such as photovoice, to provide innovative academic support that nurtures and develops the next generation of nurses appropriately.

Piloting a New Curriculum: Guided At-Home Pediatric Regional Anesthesia Education Using a Portable Ultrasound.

Ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia is the standard of care for most regional blocks in pediatric anesthesiology.Training programs must educate physicians to perform regional blocks safely and efficiently. Hands-on learning with simulation and live models is the gold standard. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has greatly hampered our ability to safely hold in-person workshops. We describe an at-home, guided virtual workshop using portable ultrasound to safely continue experiential trainee education.The primary objective of this pilot virtual workshop was to develop an effective experiential learning program without the need for live child models. The main goal was to give trainees hands-on experience obtaining anatomical ultrasound images necessary for regional anesthesia blocks in a guided-virtual setting and to evaluate the effectiveness of skills acquisition. This workshop included two pediatric anesthesiology fellows and a pediatric anesthesiologist.Trainees were instructed on ultrasound-guided regional block acquisition. For two weeks, trainees acquired images/movies of regional block anatomy at home using their own children. Virtual video assistance was available. Trainees then used acquired images/movies to discuss needle and local anesthetic placement with a pediatric regional anesthesiologist. Trainees completed pre- and post-workshop surveys assessing attitudes, perceived educational efficacy, and procedural skill acquisition. The faculty member also assessed trainees’ skills.The virtual workshop was successful. Trainees expressed successful active learning and increased comfort in performing regional blocks on live patients. They correctly identified relevant anatomy of acquired images/movies, as well as needle and local anesthetic placement at the time of debriefing. Faculty were pleased with trainees’ initial performance of regional blocks.Adapting an in-person workshop to an at-home guided experience is a safe, feasible, and well-received method for anesthesiology trainees to obtain experiential learning of ultrasound-guided regional anesthesia. This facilitated at-home learning experience allows for hands-on skill practice while preventing exposure of child models to the hospital setting during a pandemic.

Contrasting Cases: Students' Experiences in an Active-Learning Biology Classroom.

In this qualitative study, we examined the process of active learning from the perspective of undergraduate students in a high-enrollment introductory biology class. Eight students participated in a series of five interviews throughout the semester that examined their experiences during and after class. Grades were collected for each student at regular time points throughout the semester. Here, we present in-depth case studies of four students who described profoundly different responses to the same in-class learning tasks. We particularly highlight variation in students’ self-reported engagement, as engagement is thought to be a key element of successful active learning. Finally, we map each student’s self-reported engagement and the grades that he or she received. In each case, we found that grades failed to capture some aspects of the active-learning experience that students found important.

Smart learning environment: Teacher’s role in assessing classroom attention

The main purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of teacher’s position on students’ performance in higher education. A new pedagogical approach based on collaborative learning is used due to the design of a smart learning environment (SLE). This workspace uses, respectively, information and communication technologies (ICT) and radio frequency identification (RFID)-based indoor positioning system in order to examine students’ perceptions and the involvement of groups into this smart classroom. The merge of interactive multimedia system, ubiquitous computing and several handheld devices should lead to a successful active learning process. Firstly, we provide a detailed description of the proposed collaborative environment using mainly new technologies and indoor location system serving as a platform for evaluating attention. The research provides an obvious consensus on the teacher’s role in assessing classroom attention. We discuss our preliminary results on how teacher’s position influences essentially students’ participation. Our first experiments show that the integration of novel technologies in the area of higher education is extremely promoting the traditional way of teaching. The smart classroom model has been recommended to support this evolution. As a result, the found results indicate that the teacher’s position increases the learner’s motivation, engagement and effective learning.

Evidence-Based Research in STEM Teacher Education: From Theory to Practice

The paper identifies a possible cause of previous STEM education reform failures and suggests how repairing the link between evidence-based education research and teacher education practice may be a potential solution. The evidence-based STEM education research is described and placed in the general education research context to illustrate how research-based and STEM-focused teacher education can address some of the biggest challenges facing contemporary educators: the growing student disengagement, the paucity of successful active learning environments, the inadequate attention to educating and supporting teachers, the scarcity of evidence-based research on student STEM learning that can inform both teacher education practice and policy. The paper calls on placing research-based STEM teacher education in the centre of contemporary reform efforts and conducting evidence-based education research to study the effects of this process on the growth of teacher knowledge and consequently on student STEM learning. Specifically, using research-based evidence for the development of teachers’ knowledge for STEM teaching and their positive attitudes about learning (the growth mindset) are identified as possible key factors in successful STEM education reform efforts. However, more research needs to be done to examine this assertion. To do so, we suggest a four-step approach for incorporating evidence-based STEM education research into teacher education practice: Model-Reflect-Research-Practice. This approach emphasizes teacher-candidates’ active engagement with research-based pedagogies as students and as future teachers. It provides a structure for incorporating research-based pedagogies in STEM teacher education as described in the examples. The first example showcases Peer Instruction supported by PeerWise technology to engage teacher-candidates in designing STEM learning environments that promote active learning and conceptual understanding through peer learning. The second example focuses on supporting teacher-candidates’ growth by asking them to teach short mini-lessons, record and upload them onto the online collaborative platform (Collaborative Learning Annotation System) for peer feedback and reflection. Both examples incorporate collaborative educational technologies to promote the development of teacher-candidates’ knowledge and their growth mindset. The paper emphasizes how making evidence-based STEM education research a foundation of teacher education can help connect education research to teaching practice and break the vicious circle of STEM education reform failures.

Development of a self-report instrument for measuring in-class student engagement reveals that pretending to engage is a significant unrecognized problem.

Student engagement during classes includes behavioural, cognitive and emotional components, and is a pre-requisite for successful active learning environments. A novel approach to measuring student engagement was developed, involving triangulation of real-time student-self report, observation by trained observers and heart rate measurement. The self-report instrument was evaluated in four separate cohorts (n = 123) at Monash University and the University of North Carolina. The six item self-report demonstrated good reliability (Cronbach’s alpha values ranged from 0.7–0.81). The self-report showed predictive validity in that small group activities were rated as significantly more engaging than didactic lecturing. Additionally, there was significant inter-instructor variability and within-class variability, indicating good discrimination between classroom activities. This self-report may prove useful to academic teaching staff in evaluating and refining their active learning activities. Independent observation was not found to correlate with student self-report, due in part to students who were pretending to engage being rated as engaged by an observer. Strikingly, students reported that they were pretending to engage for 23% of class time, even for highly regarded instructors. Individual participants were rated as engaged for 42 of the 46 intervals for which they reported that they had “pretended to engage”, indicating that the two observers were unable to detect disengagement during periods in which students pretended to engage. Instructors should be aware that student cues such as eye contact and nodding may indicate pretending to engage. One particular self-report item; “I tried a new approach or way of thinking about the content”, correlated positively with heart rates, and a controlled study reproduced this finding during two activities that required students to try a new approach to understanding a concept. Agreement with this item also correlated with superior performance on two in-class written assessment tasks (n = 101, p<0.01). Further use of this tool and related educational research may be useful to identify in-class activities that are engaging and likely to lead to improved student attainment of learning outcomes.

Learning by Doing: Twenty Successful Active Learning Exercises for Information Systems Courses

Aim/Purpose: This paper provides a review of previously published work related to active learning in information systems (IS) courses. Background: There are a rising number of strategies in higher education that offer promise in regards to getting students’ attention and helping them learn, such as flipped classrooms and offering courses online. These learning strategies are part of the pedagogical technique known as active learning. Active learning is a strategy that became popular in the early 1990s and has proven itself as a valid tool for helping students to be engaged with learning. Methodology: This work follows a systematic method for identifying and coding previous research based on an aspect of interest. The authors identified and assessed research through a search of ABI/Inform scholarly journal abstracts and keywords, as well as additional research databases, using the search terms “active learning” and “information systems” from 2000 through June 2016. Contribution: This synthesis of active learning exercises provides guidance for information technology faculty looking to implement active learning strategies in their classroom by demonstrating how IS faculty might begin to introduce more active learning techniques in their teaching as well as by presenting a sample teaching agenda for a class that uses a mix of active and passive learning techniques to engage student learning. Findings: Twenty successful types of active learning exercises in IS courses are presented. Recommendations for Practitioners : This paper offers a “how to” resource of successful active learning strategies for IS faculty interested in implementing active learning in the classroom. Recommendation for Researchers: This work provides an example of a systematic literature review as a means to assess successful implementations of active learning in IS. Impact on Society: An updated definition of active learning is presented as well as a meaningful list of exercises that encourage active learning both inside and outside of the IS classroom. Future Research: In relation to future research, this study highlights a number of opportunities for IS faculty in regards to new active learning activities or trends to study further.

Collaborative education in a virtual learning environment

For the last few decades, there was tremendous interest in harnessing 3D virtual environments for education and training. Multi-user game-like environments make use of non-player characters and quest activities in tutoring and training. This approach incorporates successful active learning and incremental progress. This article presents issues encountered while adapting the multi-user online game genre for educational virtual environments. In this endeavour, non-player characters play a central role in organising and delivering educational content. Educational virtual environments call for additional kinds of extension beyond generic user content creation as delivered in some virtual worlds like Second Life. Support for these environments will emphasise the creation of new activities. A set of libraries and techniques named portable non-player character tutors and quests reduces the effort needed to develop and integrate educational non-player characters. These non-player characters are introduced in CVE, a platform for rapidly developing educational virtual environments. The portable non-player character tutors and quests framework enables formatted web-based exercises, quizzes, and educational content to be incorporated into virtual worlds, reducing the effort needed to create new content. The framework presented in this article introduces initial non-player characters that support educational quest activities to the 3D environments users.

Collaborative education in a virtual learning environment

For the last few decades, there was tremendous interest in harnessing 3D virtual environments for education and training. Multi-user game-like environments make use of non-player characters and quest activities in tutoring and training. This approach incorporates successful active learning and incremental progress. This article presents issues encountered while adapting the multi-user online game genre for educational virtual environments. In this endeavour, non-player characters play a central role in organising and delivering educational content. Educational virtual environments call for additional kinds of extension beyond generic user content creation as delivered in some virtual worlds like Second Life. Support for these environments will emphasise the creation of new activities. A set of libraries and techniques named portable non-player character tutors and quests reduces the effort needed to develop and integrate educational non-player characters. These non-player characters are introduced in CVE, a platform for rapidly developing educational virtual environments. The portable non-player character tutors and quests framework enables formatted web-based exercises, quizzes, and educational content to be incorporated into virtual worlds, reducing the effort needed to create new content. The framework presented in this article introduces initial non-player characters that support educational quest activities to the 3D environments users.

Teacher’s Roles to Facilitate Active Learning

This article gives a detailed analysis on the role of a teacher in the modern educational environment and justifies the need to reconsider instructional strategies following the shift from teaching to learning that has recently appeared in higher professional education and was provoked by a growing access to professional knowledge and revision of requirements to university graduates under the pressure of societal, academic and industrial community. The Bloom’s taxonomy and the 5E’s Instructional model that are commonly applied in active learning are reviewed and compared. Their significant similarity and compatibility is used to define the teaching approaches that best fit the new educational goals. A teaching model is proposed to provide educators with guidelines on how to facilitate a successful active learning where the authors specify optimal teaching roles for each learning phase. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n1p460

Student project cases: a learner-centred team activity broadly integrated across the undergraduate medical curriculum

Background: Student Project Cases (SPCs) in the Monash University medical curriculum comprise a teamwork activity that emphasises interdisciplinary learning. SPCs provide a learning program contextualized within the broader medical curriculum, in which students research and present a medical disease. SPCs were introduced into the medical curriculum to integrate more active learning by creating a learning environment which: actively engages students in the learning process and encourages deep approaches to learning, promotes self-directed learning, develops the ability to work in teams, builds information gathering and processing skills, and develops presentation skills.Methods: The design of the SPCs requires students to: make decisions regarding the overall organisation of their group and presentations, communicate and work as members of small groups, research, identify, critically analyse, synthesize and integrate information, and prepare and communicate via written and oral presentations. To ensure effective and consistent assessment practices, an extensive series of simple and effective proformas were developed, including components of peer, self and staff assessment. Assessors utilise objective observations of student performance or achievement; numerical marks are independently based on specific descriptors aligned with learning objectives. The effectiveness of SPCs was evaluated through questionnaires, focus groups and informal feedback, involving both students and staff.Conclusion: The assessment proformas were successful learning aids for the students and allowed staff to critique student performance in a non-subjective manner. The SPCs are a successful active learning program which engages students and encourages deep learning and could readily be adapted by a diverse range of courses. The SPCs also develop graduate attributes of life-long learning skills including: capacity for inquiry and research, critical thought and analysis, problem solving, teamwork and written and oral communication. Additional benefits encompass enhanced student appreciation of learning and assessment as well as development of confidence in addressing new or complex tasks.

Active learning and reflection in product development engineering education

Traditional engineering courses at tertiary level have been traditionally theory-based, supported by laboratory work, but there is now a world-wide trend towards project-based learning. In product development education, project-based learning is essential in order to integrate the disciplines of design, marketing and manufacturing towards the common goal of creating a new product. The process of development consists of a set of activities, tools and methods that are themselves evolving and improving with practice. A successful active learning course in product development education is presented in this paper as part of undergraduate engineering education, within the context of a fourth year course in New Zealand. The industry sponsored individual projects support active real-life learning and reflection. The paper presents ways in which active learning can be enhanced within the learning outcomes of a project-based paper. These methods can be adopted in educating engineering students of any discipline to better prepare them for their future careers.

Preparing students to participate in an active learning environment.

Most students have spent the majority of their school career in passive learning environments in which faculty were disseminators of information, and students were required to memorize information or use specified algorithms to "solve problems." In an active learning environment, students are encouraged to engage in the process of building and testing their own mental models from information that they are acquiring. In such a learner-centered environment, faculty become facilitators of learning, and students become active participants, engaging in a dialogue with their colleagues and with the instructor. To create a successful active learning environment, both faculty and students must make adjustments to what has been their respective "traditional" roles in the classroom. For the instructor who is committed to promoting active learning, the challenge lies in helping students understand the necessity of becoming active colleagues in learning. This process can be facilitated if the curriculum includes exercises to direct students' attention to a number of issues that impact their learning. This paper describes four such exercises designed to help students form appropriate course expectations, recognize the need for seeking clarification when communicating, recognize the role of personal experience in building mental models, and become familiar with study aids for building formal models.

The Effective Implementation of Resource‐based Learning

AbstractA secondary school teacher follows a formal process of action research in the deliberate improvement of her teaching of a mixed ability group during the first year of their GCSE course. She explores different factors in the classroom which could be an asset to successful active learning through the accessing of learning resources in the classroom. She consults the pupils, tests her hypotheses through observation, testing, questions and photographs to uncover what action needed to be tried to improve the learning situation for the pupils. She found that her ‘improved’ methods were slower than her habitual teaching methods but they yielded better results. Her account contains careful detail of the process that she experienced.