LeAnn Dourte

It’s been ten years since “active learning” became a buzzword on Penn’s campus, although the concept certainly was in practice long before that. Formats vary from class to class but center around the idea of students using class time to engage actively with the course content. On one end of the spectrum, an entire class session can be spent doing student-centered activities while traditional lecture content is moved outside of class time through readings or videos. In many of my own courses, I find myself on the other end of the scale—implementing short activities to replace some of my more repetitive lecture content (usually working through engineering examples on the board) without the need for new out-of-class content. I encourage colleagues when they ask about how to get started with active learning to “Just change 10 minutes.”

The effectiveness of these 10-minute activities hinges on their alignment with learning objectives. Students are always on the lookout for anything that they see as busy-work, so articulating the purpose of such activities is paramount to their success. These are some of the goals I think about when I design activities with my learning objectives in mind. While some of these approaches are specific to subjects with quantitative problem solving, many have applications across disciplines.

• Initiate Thought-Provoking Challenges: Present complex problems to spark curiosity and stimulate discussion, laying the groundwork for deeper exploration of course topics. At the beginning of class, I may ask students to work on a problem that I know they may not fully understand, but I encourage them to work until they get stuck and then write down what information they want or need to know to move forward. This is where we start class.
• Address Common Challenges: Provide opportunities for students to practice areas where instructor experience suggests they will have difficulty. Every year I make notes to myself throughout the semester on concepts or problems students struggled with. These serve as the inspiration for problems I may have students work on in small groups the following year.
• Encourage Diverse Perspectives: Foster critical thinking by prompting students to engage in respectful disagreement and explore contrasting viewpoints. For instance, I may assign a short reading that I know will generate different reactions and ask students to talk to students with the opposite viewpoint. Their task is not to convince the other person of their perspective, but rather to agree on how to work together despite their different perspectives.
• Explore Alternative Problem-Solving Approaches: Present tasks that can be approached using different problem-solving strategies, but that result in the same final answer. Any time I design an activity to emphasize this point, I remind myself of the importance of discussing why both approaches give the same answer. I want the activity to strengthen the conceptual understanding of each theoretical approach by highlighting their relationship.
• Challenge Assumptions: Design activities to uncover and evaluate underlying assumptions, encouraging students to be deliberate in their reasoning processes. Can I create a problem that changes depending on the assumptions the students make? For example, in biomechanics, you can model the shoulder joint as a ball and socket with a single agonist muscle or as a ball and socket with a reaction moment representing multiple muscles. This shows that both are valid models; it just depends on what you want to know.
• Facilitate Hands-On Exploration: Integrate tactile experiences to facilitate deeper understanding of abstract concepts. Can a concept be physically “seen”? If so, activities can be designed to help relate the physical to the mathematical concepts.
• Promote Error Recognition and Correction: Structure tasks that require students to identify and rectify mistakes. When I think about the questions my students most often ask during office hours, many of them are grounded in knowing their answer is wrong but not being able to figure out why. If I present them with a solution with a mistake and have them find it, then I can foster a growth mindset and resilience in the face of challenges.
• Cultivate Information Literacy: Engage students in evaluating online sources and using technology responsibly. By analyzing the reliability and relevance of digital information, students develop critical thinking and research skills. As a starting point, I may ask students to do a quick search on a topic and evaluate the top five search results. How do they know if they are valid? What do they do if they conflict? Preparing for the activity requires me to do a quick internet search and ensure the topic I chose yields some varied search results.
• Apply Conceptual Frameworks: Encourage students to apply generic frameworks to specific problem-solving, emphasizing the process of solving a problem rather than the memorization of an example problem. For each major topic in my biomechanics class, I provide students with a generic outline on how to approach problems. It includes questions to ask themselves to find variations and exceptions, but gives them guidance on where to start problems without having them memorize examples (their preferred approach). In-class activities can ask students to apply these outlines to novel problems or even ask students to develop outlines themselves as study tools.

While prioritizing learning outcomes, I also value the significance of changing the type of content delivery during a class to improve student learning. Even within the confines of a 50-minute class session, expecting students to remain seated and focused can pose a challenge to even the most dedicated student. Allowing for short mental breaks gives students a chance to reflect on their own learning and, when you turn back, they can restore focus on the task at hand.

Interspersing short activities also encourages community. Knowing that another student is confused can help combat imposter syndrome and create a sense of connection. Additionally, the process of explaining a concept to another student, can help solidify a concept in a student’s mind. The full range of benefits of group work are too numerous to fully discuss here, but I’ll emphasize that it’s possible to gain many of them in only short interactions in groups.

These short activities help me understand my students’ progress. As I navigate through the classroom, I can gather real-time feedback regarding the areas in which my students encounter the most difficulty. Interestingly, students often feel more comfortable seeking clarification when I walk by their desks, as opposed to when I am at the front of the room. Moreover, in instances where my direct involvement is not immediately required and students are effectively engaged in peer collaboration, I can reinforce student-teacher rapport, acquaint myself with students’ names, extend greetings, and briefly collect my thoughts before transitioning to the next topic.

In summary, the journey from traditional lecture formats to active learning methods doesn’t have to be a large-scale endeavor. I have found that aligning brief 10-minute activities with specific learning goals, can yield significant educational benefits. Embracing a mindset of continual refinement has allowed me to gradually expand and refine my active learning strategies, fostering a dynamic and engaging classroom environment.

LeAnn Dourte is a practice associate professor in the department of bioengineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science. 
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This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching. 

See https://almanac.upenn.edu/talk-about-teaching-and-learning-archive for previous essays.