1. Creating Significant Learning Experiences
Mandeep Singh
Roger Runquist

2. Profile of our Incoming Class
BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST®FOR THE CLASS OF 2011

3. Significant learning experiences
In a powerful learning experience students will be engaged in their own learning and there will be a high level of energy associated with it.
Characteristics of significant learning experiences
Process:
Engaged: Students are engaged in their learning.
High energy: Class has a high energy level.
Learning should be effortless, continual, and must never be forgotten as opposed to traditional way of learning which is occasional, hard and easily forgotten.
Significant learning experience has a process and an outcome dimension.
Teaching should result in a learning experience that produces something truly significant in a student’s life.
Goal is to search for ways to provide students with significant learning experiences.
Results, Impact, Outcomes
Significant and lasting change: Course results in significant changes in the students, changes that continue after the course is over and even after the students have graduated.

4. New Paradigms for Teaching
Old Paradigm
New paradigm
Knowledge
Transferred from faculty to students
Jointly constructed by students and faculty
Student
Passive vessel to be filled by faculty’s knowledge
Active constructor, discoverer, transformer of knowledge
Mode of learning
Memorizing
Relating
Faculty purpose
Classify and sort students
Develop student’s competencies and talents

5. Old Paradigm
New paradigm
Context
Competitive, individualistic
Cooperative learning in classroom and cooperative teams among faculty
Climate
Conformity, cultural uniformity
Diversity and personal esteem; cultural diversity and commonality
Epistemology
Reductionist; facts and memorization
Constructivist; inquiry and invention
Technology use
Drill and practice; textbook substitute; chalk-and-talk substitute
Problem solving, communication, collaboration, information access, expression
Teaching assumption
Any expert can teach
Teaching is complex and requires considerable training

6. Passive and Active Learning
Passive Learning
Active Learning
Experiences
Doing
Observing
Reflection
On what one is learning and how one is learning
Alone, with others
Receiving Information & Ideas
Receiving Information and Ideas:
Passive learning refers to what happens for students when they listen to a lecture or read a book: they receive information and ideas.
This is an important part of learning, but by itself, it is very limited and limiting.
“Doing” Experiences:
Doing refers to any learning activity where the learners actually do that which we want them to learn how to do: design a reservoir dam, conduct a high school band, design and conduct an experiment.

7. A Holistic View of Active Learning
The holistic view of active learning suggests an effective set of learning activities is one that includes activities from each of the three components of active learning: information and ideas, experiences, and reflection.
Specific Activities That Promote Active Learning
Getting information and Ideas
Students get information and ideas through indirect mode when they read a book or listen to a series of lectures which are organized by a textbook writer or the lecturer.
Students can get information through direct mode by reading original sources and examine original data which have not yet been fully analyzed and interpreted by others.

8. “Doing” Experiences
There are doing experiences and observing experiences.
Direct doing experiences consist of students engaging in a real action in an authentic setting.
Indirect doing experiences utilize the means of case studies, gaming, simulations, and role playing provide students with a vicarious form of doing.
Reflection
After students have encountered new information and ideas and had new experiences, they need to reflect in order to decide what meaning to give these other learning activities.

9. BELOIT COLLEGE'S MINDSET LIST® FOR THE CLASS OF 2011
What Berlin wall?
Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
They have never “rolled down” a car window.

10. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
They have grown up with bottled water.
General Motors has always been working on an electric car.

11. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
Pete Rose has never played baseball.
back