I’m currently taking a seminar on teaching college science. So far it’s been interesting– lots of discussion on what kind of information is retained by students, and the principles of backwards design, etc.
One of the assignments in the class is to observe a lecture incorporating ‘interactive learning’– which in other circles is referred to as flipping the classroom.
I believe the catch phrase is that students learn better from a ‘guide by the side’ than they do from a ‘sage on the stage’– the more active they are about using information in class, the better they learn the material. If they’re listening to a lecture, they might be tuned out for (optimistically) 10/50 minutes, If they’re doing an activity in class, they’re present for the whole period.
At Glass Town University, we have nearly 50,000 students– introductory science classes have 100-300 students. Incorporating in-class activities in a lecture of that size is not trivial. Last semester was the first time the intro bio courses made a concerted effort to introduce active learning (other than the use of clicker quizzes)– I was one of the first generation of TAs recruited to assist with this. There were half a dozen lectures where the students, in groups of three, would construct a ‘model’– a drawing of a specific biological process. It was interesting, and many students found it helpful for their understanding. A few overtly hated the whole concept (one student described it as ‘hellacious’). However, in a class of 300, anything other than ‘total disaster’ probably counts as a major victory.
Some issues:
–There’s a lot of material to cover in intro bio. When learned it as high-school AP biology (ten years ago…) we met for two hours a day, five days a week. Meanwhile, the college version only meets for 1.5 hours, three times a week. The lost lecture time is precious.
-Even with an army of TAs to assist and grade, a lot of submitted models were wrong in very weird ways. We frequently ended up using such a lax rubric that basic biological errors weren’t marked off. Having students spend an hour actively learning incorrect concepts seems like the worst possible outcome.
-Students usually did internalize the core concepts of a modeling activity, but sometimes at the expense of other information. For example, the key concept of one activity was that the shape of a protein determines its function. On the exams, some students tried to use ‘structure –> function’ as the answer to EVERY short answer question. This was incredibly frustrating to grade, and worrisome with regards to overall comprehension.
Issues notwithstanding, it’s supposed to be objectively a better way to teach science– difficult to implement, but worth the effort.
Regardless of my experiences last semester, I’m still supposed to sit in on a different class for my seminar course. This morning I crashed an introductory science course for non-majors. They weren’t doing a flipped lecture today, but the professor still made a substantial effort to keep students engaged. He was discussing the importance of experimental validation, and the power of confirmation bias. During the lecture, he played several variations of the classic ‘moon walking bear’ video, showed pictures of clouds that look like UFOs, gave a pop quiz where students were allowed to work with their neighbors. The students seemed reasonably engaged, but many many people were still on their computers, or phones. He was doing everything right— I’m not sure how he could have made it more interesting (“this will be on the test”?)
I introduced myself to the professor after class, and he was genial and good-natured about my lecture-crashing. Unexpectedly, he asked me about my research questions and career goals, which I wasn’t expecting in that context. I’m not sure what kind of impression I made, since I’m so tired that immediately afterward I tried to have a conversation with a vending machine. You have to give me my money back now…ok, thank you.
I have a lot more to say about interactive learning activities, and their applications, but I should probably come back to this subject when I’m less sleep-deprived.
Science Pilgrim 