A January 1, 2012 NPR Feature describes how Physicists Seek to Lose the Lecture as Teaching Tool. This is not new news – at least for many people it won’t be new news. Some people, however, find it interesting that physicists and faculty who teach in the “hard sciences” are coming to the conclusion that for the delivery of all course content, lectures are missing something in the return.
The article refers to Joe Redish who leads a Physics Education Research Group and a Biology Education Group. Here’s a link to Redish’s University of Maryland bio.
The article also talks about Eric Mazur, a well-respected Harvard Physicist. Mazur has a website that describes a lot of what he does in education research – including Peer Instruction and technology use in education.
David Hestenes is also discussed as an early pioneer in identifying what did and didn’t work in physics instruction. Some of Hestenes’ work is linked from this page. Several instruments he’s developed with others are available on that page for download and use.
There’s been a lot of interest in active learning strategies in the past couple of years (versus what is typically seen as passive strategies associated with listening to lectures). While we’ll devote some space to the positives of lecture (the lecture is NOT dead) in a future post, for now here are links to some sites that have good information about active learning:
- What is Active Learning (University of Minnesota CTL)
- Professional Development Module on Active Learning (Texas Collaborative for Teaching Excellence)
- Teaching Strategies: Active Learning (University of Michigan CRLT)
- Active Learning for the College Classroom (California State University)
- Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom (National Teaching and Learning Forum)
Take time to explore a couple of the above links. What strategies do you use in your classes that reflect active learning? What strategies might you start incorporating that will encourage students’ engagement in their education?
Image attribution: Image copied by C Russell 20120104 // Photo of Centre for Active Learning, University of Gloucestershire // Photo provided by JISC_Infonet http://www.flickr.com/photos/jiscinfonet/ // http://www.flickr.com/photos/jiscinfonet/858125920/ // Some rights reserved by JISC_Infonet http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en
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