Opinion Piece: Active Learning: Show the Impact!
Mary Jacob
In universities, teaching is often evaluated based on student satisfaction. Yes, we teachers want students to like our classes! But satisfaction doesn’t tell the full story. To teach effectively, we need to understand the impact our active learning implementation has on what students do and learn, not just whether they like it.
I help educators run teaching projects through the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in HE (PGCTHE) at Aberystwyth University and would like to share how we suggest colleagues evaluate the impact of active learning.
First, I ask them to think in concrete terms about the changes they wish to bring about in their students. What specific behaviour (what students do), emotion (motivation, confidence, etc.), collaboration (how they interact with and learn from peers), cognition (actual learning), and so on?
Here’s what I mean. Imagine a teacher who wants more students to come to class prepared to discuss assigned readings. Students need to do the reading (behaviour), internalise the new knowledge (cognition), speak up during class (confidence and behaviour) and recognise the value of doing so (motivation).
Once teachers have identified their desired changes, they can evaluate the impact of the active learning intervention on those changes, but how? First, they find out ‘What difference did A make to B?, where A is some aspect of the teaching intervention and B is one of the desired changes. This type of question addresses the What factor. Then they address the Why factor: why would this kind of thing help students learn? Of course, the teacher will frame the questions in their own words.
Imagine the intervention is for students to share a creative response to readings (visual, tactile, or auditory) during the seminar. Evaluation questions might include something like this:
- ‘What difference did sharing the creative response make to your preparation for the seminar?’ Options can include specific things such as looking forward to sharing their creative responses, doing the reading every week, or more time on task. A follow-on question could simply ask students to explain why.
- ‘What impact did sharing the creative response have on your ability to apply the new ideas later in the term?’ A question like this addresses actual learning, essential to any active learning project.
This is the heart of what we do. Please feel free to adapt it to evaluate the impact of your own active learning interventions. I hope you find it useful.
About the author
Dr Mary Jacob is a Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, responsible for the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PGCTHE) programme and the ARCHE scheme for Advance HE Fellowship. She seeks out events and resources useful for teaching staff and shares them via the Weekly Resource Roundup.
