Some Strategies to Engage Students in Active Learning: My Experience

Dr. Ahmed El-Mowafy

Dept. of Spatial Sciences

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

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Outline

Understand the Student Prospective

How to Motivate Students to Engage

How to Engage Students

Examples

Some Questions and Observations

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Understand the Student Prospective

3Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

How to Motivate Students to Engage

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Students’ main motivation is: Marks

However, they want also to learn

What do we need to give to students:

• Feel the value of what they learn.

• Satisfaction of achieving an objective.

• Linking what they learn to their current life and their future carrier.

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Goals

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• Engage, experiment and reflect.

• Focus activities on reasoning and the evaluation of evidence,

allow students develop the ability to formulate and solve problems.

• Discuss the problem and how it might best be approached.

• Enable students to clarify and expand on ideas;

to demand, as well as to provide, supporting evidence or reasons for

comments and opinions; and to determine whether or not an argument is

reasonable and a conclusion well-founded.

Each of these goals requires that students talk with one another, and reflect

upon their own thinking, questioning, negotiating, and problem-solving

strategies

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

How to Engage Students

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• Give them short and attractive material to prepare for the lecture before

they come (includes simulation via real-world scenarios).

• Involve students in well structured question and answer sessions

(formative and summative).

• Pairing activities such as "think, pair, share"

• Case studies

• Flash presentations

• Group project based assignments (individual marking for assigned

activities);

• Problem-based learning (arouse their curiosity to find the answer).

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Examples: Simulation-based e-learning

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An online interactive levelling virtual simulation tool was developed

Helps in the development skills in observation reading, calculations, recording and interpretation of results.

Interface of the simulation interactive tool in one example

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Examples

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• 10 minutes short quiz at the beginning addressing lecture objectives - Multiple answers,

- True or False.

•  Group Questions (5 minutes)

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Examples

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• Case studies / Problem-based learning

(in a group of two) You are the chief surveyor and you would like to survey a land of 2 km × 2 km in one day, discuss possible methods.

• Competitions

Only the best group will get a bonus mark

• Flash Presentations (5 minutes)

rotation of presentations

Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.

Some Questions and ObservationsCan we do these activities all the time?

Teaching of most engineering concepts requires classical methods! T/F

Need to define difference between lectures and tutorials.

Some students do not want to prepare – Some do not want to be active

learners! How to derive them to engage ?

Preparation of new attractive materials for active learning increases

workload?

Answers to the above questions/observations may vary case-by-case.

10Ahmed El-Mowafy, Dept. of Spatial SciencesFaculty of S&E, T&L Symposium 2013, 23 July, 2013.