What is active learning?

The Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota writes:

We might think of active learning as an approach to instruction in which students engage the material they study through reading, writing, talking, listening, and reflecting. Active learning stands in contrast to "standard" modes of instruction in which teachers do most of the talking and students are passive… Students and their learning needs are at the center of active learning.

See the website below for a further discussion of active learning, tips on how to carry it out, and videos scenarios.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/active/what/index.html

Looking for a fun way to teach and review vocabulary with your students?

The attached article, from the "Teaching Professor" online, provides step-by-step instructions on how to use game shows to test vocabulary.

For a discussion of rubrics see:
http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/march_2005/evalua...
Scroll down to “Good Rubrics”. This section will discuss the ICE rubric model which focuses on Ideas, Connections and Extensions.

"True research papers are more than a loose collection of anecdotal memories or a patchwork of data pulled from several books. But while new to most first-year students, a research paper can be incredibly exciting, rewarding, and even comforting to write... Research papers come in all shapes, sizes, forms, and disciplines..."

A deeper discussion of genre is continued at the OWL at Purdue:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/genre.html

What do you NOT know about how students learn?

During your discussion sections you may encounter disengaged students. Individual reasons for disengagement may occur; however, Donald Harward takes a micro approach to understanding the structural and institutional causes of disengagement.

He argues: “What all this reveals is higher education’s failure to attend to the most fundamental of our responsibilities: the development of the whole person — intellectual, emotive/behavioral, and civic.”

From: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/15/harward

What could you do more of to build on how students learn?

There are multiple ways of organizing student discussions. Refer to the ArtsOne Manual for Teaching Assistants 2008-09 (pgs. 15-28) for a detailed discussion of how to incorporate “think-pair-share”, “buzz groups”, “critical debate”, “jigsaw” etc. techniques into your tutorial sessions.

What do you know about how students learn?

There are 3 main learning styles: auditory, visual and kinesthetic. Keep this in mind when planning your tutorial groups. It may be helpful to ask students to consider their own learning styles. Once aware of how they best learn, they may be able to have more input in how you facilitate their learning. Students may be interested in the following learning style questionnaire from the University of South Dakota:

http://www.usd.edu/trio/tut/ts/style.html

This Writing Lab newsletter focuses mainly on developing writing skills. It offers students different strategies that can be used in the writing process depending on their learning styles.

http://writinglabnewsletter.org/archives/v27/27.8.pdf

"Make sure students understand that discussion is not simply an invitation to restate their opinions. Remind them: The goal of critical thinking is to examine your own assumptions and evidence, not just to criticize the thinking of others who disagree with you!"

The article below comes from Tomorrow's Professor mailing list,
sponsored by THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING
(http://ctl.stanford.edu).

The pdf version can be found at:
http://ctl.stanford.edu/Newsletter/discussion_leading.pdf

Also, a word document is attached.

Here are some things that we touched on during the meetings:

• Remember what your first year of university was like. Students' questions and concerns could be similar.