Making Students Active Learners
Consider a topic that you usually present using a pure lecture approach. Discuss ways you could make students more active learners during such lessons.
Teaching culinary arts, you have them interacting all the time. During demos they can see, smell and taste the food. I quiz them on what needs to be done. I have a fun activity is that they have to talk about what their favorite fruit and vegetables are.
Depending on the topic and/or material, lecture is needed in a classroom. I have found breaking up the lecture into shorter segments and allowing students to discuss, answer questions, and finalize notes, helps with retaining information. I've found, activities that break up a lecture and discussion that offers a connection tends to be most successful.
Hi Mary,
You are right! Students love the hands-on portion of the class. Pure lecture seems to be ineffective with some students. Students retain more when they can actually become actively involved.
Patricia Scales
Hi Qadar,
Awesome teaching tactic. I can tell you want to be very effective as an instructor. Students can really give us great feedback to make us even better as an instructor.
Patricia Scales
Hi Bonita,
This lecture/hand-on combination works well! Students need to be able to apply what they have learned.
Patricia Scales
Hi Sheila,
Love it! Having fun while learning! Students retain more if they are having fun while learning.
Patricia Scales
Hi Melinda,
Peer learning is very effective! I even let the students introduce various chapters from time to time. Students love getting involved.
Patricia Scales
I teach Evolution of Costume History, it is basically very much like teaching art history. There is a great deal of materials to go over each week, and it is very easy to fall into the trap of just delivering the materials through lectures.
When lecturing even though I include slides,students attention begin to drop. I add activities that the student can do in class, sometimes individually or in groups that reinforce the learning objectives and reinfoces the lesson for that day. The students really enjoy the opportunity to get up and do a lab activity and create something instead of sitting and looking at slides.
I teach healthcare computer classes. For my lecture I use PowerPoint presentation in conjunction with demonstration. I, basically, go back and forth between the software and the lecture. After every Lesson Objective (LO) that I cover I ask them two to three questions based on that LO. At the end of the course I give students a survey about how to improve my lecture, if any. You can’t imagine all the good ideas I am getting from them.
We came up with a review game before the final exam. We ask the students a question, the first to raise their hand gets to answer. If the answer is correct they get candy.
While conducting a CPR class, the first portion of the class is pure lecture , (video, Instructor comments)giving out information with details. The second half of the class time is hands on.
I like that idea of having the students break into groups and make the "notes" and quiz each other as a quiz review-type of thing. I may have to try that. I am still relatively new to teaching after having been a nurse for a long time, so I need some down to earth ways to implement these concepts. Mindy
Hi Ceola,
Super! What a fun way to present a lesson and get students involved. Students love having fun while learning.
Patricia Scales
Hi LAWRENCE,
I am sure that students are more anxious for the lab portion than the lecture portion. Students generally have the idea of just let us do it. They have to understand that theory is an important step to lab.
Patricia Scales
Hi Ali,
This is a smart tactic to utilize to encourage students to read! Our students do not like reading, and this method forces them to read.
Patricia Scales
Hi Enrique,
A good combination of learning is to provide lecture and to have the students apply what has been lectured. Students really do learn more when they can perform hands-on activities.
Patricia Scales
Active learning is a plus in my book. I think students do well when they are involved in the lesson through some kind of an activity.
It causes the instsructor to become creative in the classroom. My students are stenographers and "words are our best friends" is my best "pure" lecture for preperation of what's to come in the course. Over the years I've created many activites: Crossword Puzzles. Team games,like "Beat the clock" where each team must translate a list of short-hand words to English before the timer goes off on the clock. The instructor decides on the amount of time and the teams are given the instructions/rules.
It allows me to monitor and interact with my students. I make sure they receive a copy of the
finished work for study purposes.
As a Culinary Instructor the most challenging days are the lecture day prior to the labs. We have found that placing many of the ingredient out for product ID and tasting is a great way to get the student involved. Or at the very least have them start prepping for the next day. This laso helps with knife skills which are in high demand in the industry.
One way that I get my students to participate more in class is to give them an assignment that they have to come prepared to speak about. For example, you might ask them to bring a quote from the assigned reading which they especially related to, was inspiring or enlightening. Or you might ask them to bring a quote of a passage that they did not understand.
