Active Teaching Strategies

Active Teaching Strategies

Teaching & Learning Center

21st October, 2020

Faculty Survey Results

Why do we teach?

What is the purpose of teaching?

Theories of Learning

• Behaviorism:

A Key Principle of Behaviorism is that behavior can be changed

through reinforcement

Desired BHV can be promoted through rewards

Undesired BHV can be taught through Punishment

(O’Donnell et al, 2011).

Students in such approach learn the desired behaviors regardless

of their internal states or previous experience

Theories of Learning

• Constructivism:

Unlike behaviorism, instead of teaching behavior, it promotes how an individual can be the agent for his own learning.

(Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky)

Instead of viewing the learner as a passive consumer of knowledge, it encourages teachers to alter their methods of instruction to foster active learner engagement

How is knowledge constructed through this

approach?

1. Assimilation: make sense of how information or things work.

2. Accommodation: altering knowledge to preserve consistency in the face of new information ex: a child may believe that people cry when they are sad then sees an athlete winner cry, he will alter his knowledge that people may cry when they are happy.

3. This cycle of assimilating existing knowledge then revise knowledge to accommodate new information is what represents intellectual development.

Activity

• Outline your teaching and learning approaches

specific to your discipline.

This shall represent the core of your teaching

philosophy

The Gap Between Minds

• As a teacher, it is important to first acknowledge the

gap between what you know and what your students

know, and then take the steps to bridge this gap.

➢Motivation is Key:

– Intrinsic motivation: Self-motivated

– Extrinsic motivation: External factors ex: promotion,

grades, money

How to Motivate Students

• Engage your students: Let your passion for the content influence how you present it to students. The more you are, the more motivated they may become.

• Build student-teacher relationships: Learning about each of your students and investing in their performance will encourage their personal investment in their performance.

• Contextualize information: Use examples to show students why their performance and comprehension of the content is valuable beyond the learning experience.

• Use active learning techniques: Active learning techniques give students the opportunity to engage with their academic growth, development, and performance.

• Create realistic learning goals (outcomes): By identifying the goals that a student is expected to achieve, you make them aware of milestones they can use to measure and drive their performance.

• Test and grade students appropriately: Use assignments to gauge what students know, and how well they know it. Students can use these assignments to identify areas for improvement.

• Provide regular feedback: Feedback both in the form of praise and constructive criticism, will motivate students to build their knowledge and skills.

• Encourage active participation: Give students the opportunity to further participate in their learning journey by allowing them to identify individual topics for their projects.

Activity

• Introduce Yourself to the class, your background, what you find interesting about your course, what are some of your other interests

• Communicate your expectations about how the class will run

• Communicate the outcome expected from the course

• Audience will comment on what they find effective and what they find ineffective

Activity

• Write one statement stating why do you teach what

you teach for?

Lesson Plan

• Effective Lesson Plan goes through 4 stages:

Main Part of the Lesson

Conclusion of the Lesson

• What was the most important thing you learned

today?

• What question remains in your mind?

Teaching as a Story Telling

• Research on storytelling as a teaching tool in higher

education (Alterio & McDrury, 2003) suggests that

storytelling is associated with cognitive gain in a way that

encourages imagination, increase memory capabilities

and enhance visualization skills. It boosts the capability to

critically analyze and reflect on given information.

• Storytelling in higher education proved to:

- Facilitate learning.

- Promote Positive Learning Environment.

- Social tools: building rapport with your students.

Activity

• Think of a remarkable story or experience you went

through in your teaching journey and tell us about it.

• Emphasizes:

• 1- Participation

• 2- Collaboration

• 3- Critical Thinking

• 4- Analysis

• 5-Applied Knowledge

Active Learning(Student-centered rather than Instructor-centered)

Types of Active Learning

• Case-based Learning

• Problem-based Learning

• Activity-based Learning

• Role Play

• Peer Review

• Gamification

• Debating

Activity

• Select an active learning technique with which to deliver a piece of introductory content

• Detail how you intend to implement your chosen technique to effectively deliver the chosen content;

• Justify your choice of active learning technique; and

• Outline the classroom design required to best support student engagement within the lesson.

Types of Assessments

• 1- Formative – an indicator for students knowledge gaps (may be ungraded or have very little grades):

• Ex: short quizzes, 1 min paper, short presentations, end of class survey

Types of Assessments

• Summative: Formal examinations (bulk of students’ grades)

• Be specific in the requirements

• Communicate grading policies

• Ensure fairness and consistency

• Give constructive feedback

• Encourage Peer reflection and Self-reflection

• Brain ology, is a curriculum developed byStanford Psychology Professor Carol Dweckwho popularized the concept of academicmindsets.

• Dweck’s research shows that students can turnfixed mindsets—the belief that intelligence isfinite—into growth mindsets—the convictionthat the harder they work, the more theirintelligence will grow.

Developing the mindset of the students

- Rejected from 30 jobs including KFC- Rejected from Harvard 10 times- Failed School and College Exams- Current Net Worth: $50.4 Billion

Main Suggested Active E-learning Strategies

1. Weekly short research 9. Introduce new assessment (formative 10 – 15%) –

participative

2. Printed checklist of students to make sure you

include all students 10. Graded online class participation and homework

3. Teamwork Monitoring method (weekly) 11. Ask students what they prefer and what they do

not prefer

4. Ask questions and let students write answers in

the chat section 12. Play a video and ask questions on it

5. Homework questions for each lecture to cover

most important concepts

13. Opening cameras, calling by name, allow

discussions

6. Ask students one by one if they heard the

recorded lecture 14. Frequent quizzes

7. Let students share screen to show their work 15. Put marks for participation (earned not granted)

8. Ask for understanding feedback 16. Kahoot application (real time interactive quizzes)

Teaching• You Laugh

• You Cry

• You work harder than you ever thought you could

• Some days you feel you are changing the world

• Some days you barely try to make it through the day

• Your mind will be packed with memories of those

you have impacted their lives