Active learning Approaches

y classroom is the one with lots of noise and activity from students.
We like to get out from behind our desks, move around and have some fun — while learning.
Moving and having fun helps to create a positive classroom culture. And I feel that a positive classroom culture is fundamental to learning.
I’m not alone. Researchers from the Institute of Medicine found “children who are more active show greater attention, have faster cognitive processing speed, and perform better on standardized academic tests than children who are less active.”

I work part-time with elementary learners - with gifted learners during the school year and teaching maker education camps during the summer. The one thing almost all of them have in common is yelling out, "I can't do this" when the tasks aren't completed upon first attempts or get a little too difficult for them.…

The next generation learning experience should lean heavily on collaboration. I see a trend, especially in the sciences, that worries me. Many instructors discourage or even forbid students from collaborating with their classmates, considering it to be cheating. This puts enormous pressure on students. More importantly, this type of learning does not model what they will encounter in the work world, where they will be not discouraged but, rather, expected to collaborate. While I understand the necessity for independent work, there are other ways to achieve the goal of mastery while encouraging collaboration. Some instructors simply alternate assignments, requiring independent work with collaborative projects. Collaborative work can also be paired with lessons about ethics and plagiarism to help shape our students into responsible, ethical adults.

Some of my contemporaries seem pessimistic about today's students, noticing, for example, that students prefer smartphones to books. I don't subscribe to this pessimistic view. The same tension occurs with every generation: I remember this skepticism from older generations when I was young. Today's students grew up with information at their fingertips, so they think differently and learn differently. We should recognize that what they need from a next generation classroom is different too. 

Schools are designed to be practical but this has a hidden drawback. Innovation is often impractical because it’s unpredictable. So, what if the push toward “practical skills” in school is actually making learning impractical? And what if impractical ideas and skills we ignore are actually what students will use later in life?

One of the most challenging aspects of this school year has been using project-based learning to integrate curriculum. Projects are a beast! It feels like I am boarding a roller coaster each time we begin a new project. In fact, it feels like every project follows the same emotionally turbulent trajectory as pictured below.

“Self-directed learning” is a major catch-phrase of 21st Century educationalists, and undeniably a critical skill in the labor markets of the future. The modern world of work demands that people have demonstrable abilities to self-manage: their time and their inputs. Employees that can be tasked to solve a problem without micro-management, and can be relied upon to use their resources responsibly and sparingly, are highly prized.

On the flip-side, the freedom to meet targets and objectives in “your own way” is also much appreciated by employees. When organisations set objectives, rather than tasks, employees feel a sense of ownership and freedom that contrasts with the rote task completion of employment in by-gone days. By dictating the end-goal, rather than the process, organisations empower teams to deliver projects in more creative and effective ways.

Then there’s the “gig economy” – 34% of America’s workforce already self-identify as freelancers. Vast trenches of educated professionals are pursuing bona fide, and profitable careers shopping their specialist skills on the global, highly competitive freelance market. Whether they learned it at school or not – these individuals are required to have massive amounts of daily drive, discipline and time management. In short: their entire work-life is self-directed.

Highlights Of The Personalized eLearning Approach

Create learner-centered goals and objectives.
Assess online learners to identify knowledge gaps.
Offer timely, personalized eLearning feedback.
Provide constant online support.
Features Of The Personalized eLearning Approach At A Glance

Avatar selection/Role selection.
Pre-assessment on topics covered.
Range of educational pathways.
Personalized recommendations/feedback.
Re-directs learners for remediation and for good performance.
Provides resources for further exploration of knowledge.
Learners are informed and empowered.
Assessments are related to meaningful tasks.
Reduces the achievement gap.
Enhanced interaction between individual learners and individual teachers.
Facilitates the “community of learning” approach.
Instead of incorporating a linear navigation map, it offers online learners a clickable guide that features diverse eLearning activities and multimedia.

Today Rody Boonchouy @rodyboo from the Buck Institute talks about effective project based learning. With a powerful metaphor explaining the difference between projects and project based learning, Rody sets the stage to discuss PBL trends and tips. Let’s dive deeper into PBL.

Informing and feeding that vision should be deep knowledge—ideally research findings about how students learn, what shapes their readiness to learn and how those principles can be applied in tools to support learning. Digital Promise has devoted significant resources to showing the links between what we know—and how it gets implemented in school. For instance, the organization’s research map connects topics such as student motivation to published research frameworks and results.

Mastery-based learning allows students to learn at their own pace.

The roots of student interest are described in the KQED web site article, “How the Power of Interest Drives Learning”:

1        A seven-year-long study by Judith Harackiewicz showed that interest predicted long term learning outcomes more accurately than students’ initial grades in a course. In general, writes Harackiewicz, “research has found that interest is a more powerful predictor of future choices than prior achievement or demographic variables.”

2        The research of Paul Silvia suggests that to be interesting, material must be novel, complex, and comprehensible.

The first point implies that capturing and maintaining interest are vital to success, and that interest is perhaps the great leveler, as opposed to students’ existing assets.  Educators need to get this right. 

The second point provides plausible explanations for why we’re still challenged on the engagement front these days, in spite of the new tools.

Project-based learning (PBL) is a trend that’s spreading faster than a wildfire during a drought. Why? Because research on PBL proves that it increases student engagement and achievement, and helps students develop the 21st-century skills they need to succeed in their future careers.

For PBL to reach its full potential, though, educators must learn to step back and be facilitators in the classroom, a change that requires thoughtful and ongoing professional development. Here, three educators offer their insights on what it takes to roll out and support a successful PBL implementation.

Give Teachers Autonomy, Flexibility

Summary: Situated Learning Theory posits that learning is unintentional and situated within authentic activity, context, and culture.

Originator: Jean Lave[1]

Key Terms: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP), Cognitive Apprenticeship

Situated Learning Theory (Lave)

In contrast with most classroom learning activities that involve abstract knowledge which is and out of context, Lave argues that learning is situated; that is, as it normally occurs, learning is embedded within activity, context and culture. It is also usually unintentional rather than deliberate. Lave and Wenger call this a process of “legitimate peripheral participation”[2].

Knowledge needs to be presented in authentic contexts — settings and situations that would normally involve that knowledge. Social interaction and collaboration are essential components of situated learning — learners become involved in a “community of practice” which embodies certain beliefs and behaviors to be acquired. As the beginner or novice moves from the periphery of a community to its center, he or she becomes more active and engaged within the culture and eventually assumes the role of an expert.

Michael Wesch’s YouTube videos gave me the courage — and the ideas — to turn more and more of the responsibility for not just learning, but teaching, over to my students. Like most great educators, Wesch, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, is a great communicator. Fortunately for us, he is also a YouTube genius, so you don’t have to take my word for it — watch and hear him directly. Most of us first learned of him when his “The Machine is Us/ing Us” went viral 10 years ago, with more than 11 million views — a look at how the Web and hypertext were changing not just our ways of communicating, but our ways of thinking, as well. He also raised an issue that has come to the forefront most recently — as we use the Web, we are teaching it how to change us more effectively. He says he never intended to make a viral video, it was originally meant for his digital ethnography class.