Designing an active classroom has always been important to me. Prior to earning my doctorate at TCU, I was a third grade elementary school teacher. I had the classroom where all of the “hyper” students were placed. Being full of energy in my classroom was actually seen as an advantage. Students were allowed and encouraged to move around the room and to collaborate with their peers. Rarely was our classroom quiet.
I divided up the school year based upon thematic literature units. For example, we would read Charlotte’s Web while learning about rural communities in Social Studies and farm animals (and/or arachnids) in Science. We had math centers with thematic games. We wrote fiction stories about visiting a farm (to teach descriptive writing) or being an animal (to teach perspective). If we were lucky and the timing worked out, we would go on a field trip to a working farm or a small county fair. To end each unit, we always put on a play.
In the beginning of the year, the productions tended to be small but by the end of the year they were quite elaborate! The students enjoyed writing the scripts, auditioning for roles, memorizing lines, rehearsing scenes, creating scenery and costumes, developing and distributing advertisements, rearranging the classroom to accommodate the “stage” and audience, and always putting on an entertaining show.
Teaching this way made sense to me and seemed to be a way for students with different learning preferences to stay involved with the material. It also allowed me to develop meaningful relationships with my students because I was actively engaged with them.
Now, fast forward ten (or so) years from an elementary classroom with 8-year-olds to a university classroom with 18 year-olds. My teaching style changed. Instead of actively engaging with my students and putting on live productions, I was standing in the front of the classroom lecturing while using slides and an occasional video clip. Boring!
After lecturing for 2 hours and 40 minutes I would be mentally exhausted and physically drained. My students weren’t being challenged to engage and think critically, and neither was I. Something had to change, so I began to experiment with ideas on how to create a more active learning environment within the university classroom. I drew upon my elementary school experience.
I started small, utilizing small groups more and large discussions less. Somewhere along the way, I read research that said an adult learner’s attention span was approximately 12 – 20 minutes. So, I began to challenge myself. The first challenge was to limit lectures to less than 15 minutes at a time. The second challenge was to create a collaborative learning environment where students felt respected and wanted to participate. The third challenge was to create meaningful activities, which met the learning objectives of the course; I didn’t want to assign “busy work.”
During this time, I also began to enroll in workshops and attend events offered and developed by the Koehler Center. I started with an eLearning Boot Camp, followed by Instructional Design Strategies, and then the Student Centered Active Learning (SCAL) Institute. SCAL has influenced my understanding of active learning environments, and it has challenged and motivated me to do things differently in my classes!
SCAL is a three day workshop where learning how to design student-centered active learning environments is facilitated through a parallel process, meaning that the workshop is designed as an active learning environment in and of itself. For example, we discussed the paradigm shift from teaching to learning through a jigsaw activity. One person in each group became the “expert” on a specific section of a journal article and then we came together to share our expertise within our group. We took an assessment about our personal learning preferences and then created learning modules that addressed all four preferences in order to better engage all students. We learned about flipped classrooms by reading a book prior to attending the workshop and then rotating through stations related to the book. We also had instruction and hands-on experience in the New Media Writing Studio, learning how to use various types of software to create projects such as video lectures. During the last day of the workshop, we developed active learning modules for one of our classes the following semester. Throughout the workshop, learning was done both independently and collaboratively.
Following the workshop, we implemented the modules we created, had follow-up meetings to check-in on progress, and received student feedback via Teaching Analysis Polls (TAPs). We have developed new learning modules and received instruction on using AirMedia software. We have been allowed to use the new classroom in Winton-Scott Hall. Previously, I had a lecture style classroom and when we had group work, students had to move out into the hallways and into other classrooms. Being in a classroom that encourages movement (rolling desks and chairs) and creative expression (you can write on the walls) has made a huge difference in my ability to facilitate an active learning environment. Throughout the both semesters, there have also been opportunities to attend presentations related to designing learning environments and flipping classrooms from experts in the field.
Since attending SCAL, I have been both invigorated and challenged to facilitate instruction (formerly known as teaching) in a student centered active classroom. It is a process of trial and error. During both semesters, I have tried out a variety of learning activities from SCAL such as 1) Holding a debate on whether or not spanking is detrimental to children (based on peer-reviewed journal articles read before class), 2) Facilitating an activity entitled four corners where I created discussion items for each corner of the room based upon material read outside of class, at each corner students discussed the items and then created a summary slide of what they talked about, and 3) Creating a video assignment where students produced, wrote, and created informational videos about careers working with children.
Since SCAL, students have come to expect to be active participants in their learning and they come to class prepared to think, engage, and collaborate. Now, the students and I both leave class feeling like we’ve had a mental workout!
This article was written by Casey Call, Department of Psychology, for the Fall 2014 Issue of Insights Magazine.