Active Learning Session: Mountain West Summer Institute
Activize it!
Objective: Develop a repertoire of EnGauging activities
With a partner, choose one passive lecture topic form the column below and write some ideas about how to
convert it into an active learning opportunity.
Passive Lecture
Every cell in an organism has the same DNA, but
different genes are expressed at different times and
under various conditions. This is called gene
expression.
Active Learning
Different parts of your body can do different things.
For example, your hand has fine motor skills and
your leg does not. This is due to the presence of
different motor units.
Evolution requires preexisting variation in the
population, selective pressure, and reproduction. It
happens at the population level.
Many people have concerns about stem cells. Some
of these are well-founded and others are not. You
have to decide for yourself.
Based on the data shown in this slide, researchers
concluded that Snarticus inferensis was an invasive
species.
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Summary of the BSCS 5E Instructional Model
Objective 3: Identify strategies that are useful for implementation of active learning
Phase
Engagement
Exploration
Explanation
Elaboration
Evaluation
Summary
The teacher or a curriculum task accesses the learners’ prior knowledge and
helps them become engaged in a new concept through the use of short
activities that promote curiosity and elicit prior knowledge. The activity should
make connections between past and present learning experiences, expose prior
conceptions, and organize students’ thinking toward the learning outcomes of
current activities.
Exploration experiences provide students with a common base of activities
within which current concepts (i.e., misconceptions), processes, and skills are
identified and conceptual change is facilitated. Learners may complete lab
activities that help them use prior knowledge to generate new ideas, explore
questions and possibilities, and design and conduct a preliminary investigation.
The explanation phase focuses students’ attention on a particular aspect of
their engagement and exploration experiences and provides opportunities to
demonstrate their conceptual understanding, process skills, or behaviors. This
phase also provides opportunities for teachers to directly introduce a concept,
process, or skill. Learners explain their understanding of the concept. An
explanation from the teacher or the curriculum may guide them toward a
deeper understanding, which is a critical part of this phase.
Teachers challenge and extend students’ conceptual understanding and skills.
Through new experiences, the students develop deeper and broader
understanding, more information, and adequate skills. Students apply their
understanding of the concept by conducting additional activities.
The evaluation phase encourages students to assess their understanding and
abilities and provides opportunities for teachers to evaluate student progress
toward achieving the educational objectives.
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Barriers to Active Learning
Objective 4: Examine the reasons for student resistance to active learning and plan for addressing resistance
Everyone in your group should select one slip of paper that describes a student barrier. Then fill out this table
with underlying causes and strategies for overcoming the barrier. Share out.
Student Barrier*
Possible underlying cause
Strategies for Overcoming this
Barrier (choose from below or write
your own)
Potential Solution 1 – Instructor Immediacy
Instructor immediacy involves students’ perception of the instructor as approachable and concerned about student
success (e.g. making eye contact, learning names, moving around the classroom]. High levels of instructor immediacy
have been positively correlated with student learning (Kearney et al., 1988; Kelley and Gorham, 1988). One study of the
relationship between student resistance and instructor immediacy found that students were significantly more likely to
comply with instructor requests from a moderate or highly immediate instructor than requests from a low-immediacy
instructor (Burroughs, 2007). In addition, high instructor immediacy has been shown to correlate with student
motivation to learn, as well as affective and cognitive learning (e.g. Titsworth, 2001; Witt and Wheeless, 2001).
Potential Solution 2 – Explicit Discussion of Pedagogical Choices
Help students understand why the teaching methods being used have been chosen. Some ways include sharing with
students findings from studies about research on the efficacy of active learning, engaging students in reflecting on how
they learn, and establishing expected student behaviors during class (Science Education Initiative, 2013).
Potential Solution 3 – Structure student-student interactions to promote fairness
The social loafing research literature offers three specific, research-based suggestions for maximizing positive student
interactions in highly collaborative classrooms and decreasing incidents of social loafing: decrease group size, decrease
project scope, and provide mechanisms for peer evaluation (Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008; Brooks and Ammons, 2003).
Potential Solution 4 – Give Students Mechanisms to Voice Concerns Before they Become Resistant
Collecting systematic classroom evidence about student perspectives on the learning environment and student
experiences within it is a simple way to gauge potential resistance and its sources. Examples include: (1) in-class
anonymous clicker questions about if a particular assignment has been helpful for their learning; (2) minute papers that
ask student to explain if they agree or disagree with the statement that the teaching approaches used in the class are
improving their understanding of Biology; (3) online reflective journal in which they write about how a specific
assignment supported their learning; and (4) Keep, Quit, Start cards in which students are asked to consider their
learning in the course and propose one thing that the instructor should keep doing, one thing they should quit doing,
and one thing they should start doing. Share the results with the class in a discussion.
*Student resistance examples and potential solutions adapted from Seidel and Tanner, 2014.
(complete list of references cited here are in Readings > Supplementary Readings > Active Learning Supplementary Readings)
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Resources: Videos of Active Learning
1. Wendy Dustman – teaching Microbiology for Biology Majors using the flipped classroom model and
collaborative student working groups
http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/26608/65996459.mov
2. Tessa Andrews – teaching introductory biology for non-science majors using a series of problem-based
challenges related to sex determination
http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/12746/614158822.mov
3. Mara Evans – teaching ecology and competition in an introductory course for biology majors using a
categorizing table http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/5576/2962111.mov
4. Erin Dolan – introducing a peer review activity on vaccines for an introductory biology course for nonscience majors http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/32309/15136614.mov
5. Erin Dolan –teaching regulation on energy transforming pathways for a Biochemistry course for biology
majors using model building, clickers, and collaborative learning
a. Start of session…
http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/22253/27757327.mov
b. Biochemistry session continued…
http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/18074/4572359.mov
c. Biochemistry session continued…
http://podcasting.gcsu.edu/4DCGI/Podcasting/UGA/Episodes/12761/45486118.mov
Additional Video Resources:
iBiology Video Series
http://www.ibiology.org/scientific-teaching/active-learning.html
The iBiology Scientific Teaching Series project is a series of videos that provide current and future
undergraduate biology instructors with the tools to design and implement a student-centered curriculum
using evidence-based pedagogy.
Class Notes Video Series
Several University of North Carolina faculty members recognized for their skill at teaching large classes have
generously shared their expertise in a series of video interviews, produced and curated by the Center for
Teaching Excellence. This large and growing library of video clips features faculty from various departments
discussing their general approach to teaching large enrollment courses and the specific instructional
techniques they use. You can view these videos on CFE’s YouTube Channel, where they are organized
into playlists by instructor and by instructional technique.
http://www.youtube.com/user/UNCCFE/videos?view=1
Clicker Resources from Carl Wieman’s Science Teaching Initiative at the University of British Columbia:
http://www.cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/clickers.htm
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