Active teaching and learning workshop Dr Timos Almpanis & Dr Danielle Tran Senior Lecturers in Teaching, Learning & Professional Development (EDU)

Aims of this workshop To reflect upon our current teaching strategies – how do we engage students? To consider a few active teaching strategies and try them out together! To link practice with educational theory and Bloom’s taxonomy

Active learning/teaching ‘Active learning is an approach based on activities that encourage students to take an active, engaged part in the learning process. This is in contrast to more traditional methods of teaching such as a lecturer trying to ‘transmit’ knowledge to students as they sit and listen’. (UCL, 2017, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/active-learning-toolkit)

5 min warm-up task How do you engage students when teaching a class? Why do you use this method?

Voting (& electronic voting)

Peer Instruction Discuss your response with a colleague and then vote again

The peer instruction process (Image from https://dbctle. erau

Active learning methods game adapted from Geoff Petty http://geoffpetty.com/for-teachers/active-learning/ Working in groups, decide on the best and the worst methods from the point of view of effective learning and create a pyramid putting the most effective method on top.

Bloom’s taxonomy Image source: https://cft. vanderbilt

Re-do the activity in light of the Bloom taxonomy Re-do the activity in light of the Bloom taxonomy. Would you change anything? Working in groups, decide on the best and the worst methods from the point of view of effective learning and create a pyramid putting the most effective method on top.

Activity Debriefing Discuss your top three options taking into account: a) Your own context b) The level of the students Which activities would be more suitable for group work? Which activities could be done in pairs?

Active Learning aligns with Constructivism Learners as active seekers of knowledge in their attempt to create meaning Teachers become facilitators of the learning process Learning is socially constructed

Constructivist approaches © Can Stock Photo / Andres Problem solving and collaborative learning are commonly used

Constructivist approaches © Can Stock Photo / iqoncept Tasks are situated in real-world scenarios (Contextual & Situated learning)

Further Resources Active Learning by Geoff Petty http://geoffpetty.com/for-teachers/active-learning/ Peer Instruction: Using pairs to engage all students http://www.crlt.umich.edu/mazur-blog Using peer instruction to flip your classroom https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/2013/04/using-peer-instruction-to-flip-your- classroom-highlights-from-eric-mazurs-recent-visit/

Questions?