Active Learning
Now It's Your Turn!
Supporting Learners in Active Learning
Personally, I don't like to lecture heavily during my lessons, especially since I never had enough time with my students. Traditional methods of instruction are based on a lecture format where the teacher controls most, if not all, of the learning. Students have a passive role in their learning, entrusting the teacher to cultivate their mind. However, methods like Active Learning seek to put power into the student's hands. Students become instructors, advocates, and creators. Teachers become a facilitator instead of a lecturer, guiding student's thinking and providing them with the resources to achieve their goals.
This week, I explored Ms. Malhiot's American Revolution photoshop project, which can be found here. After reviewing the activity, I created a Padlet that summarized my findings and thoughts on the effectiveness of the activity. Below is a screenshot of my Padlet:
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| Padlet by Lauren Johnson |
The American Revolution: It's Like We Were There!
Ms. Malhiot's activity was for students to photoshop themselves in a picture depicting a historical figure and/or event during the American Revolution. Students had to either photoshop their face or body into the graphic. Some students chose to add a dialogue bubble. A Quick Response, or "QR" code, is attached to the poster where the student can provide a brief description of their project. The QR code will take you to a platform called "AudioBoom" where students can record themselves providing a description of their project. Although the links are not valid on Ms. Malhiot's page anymore, the platform still exists. An example of the activity can be seen below:
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| Ms. Malhiot's American Revolution Activity |
I thought this activity was a great way to engage students because it uses multiple modalities of relaying information such as writing text, photoshopping images, and recording audio. However, as I mentioned in my Padlet, losing access to the Audioboom made the activity feel incomplete and photoshopping students making a silly face (as seen in the left photo) on an event that contained a high death toll can be seen as inappropriate. When it comes to these topics, how can we create activities that balance novelty with seriousness? Is there such a balance?
Aside from my critiques, I found this activity to be a great example of Active Learning. The students didn't simply learn about the event through lecture and move on. They had to understand the figures and events, their importance to history, and demonstrate their knowledge using the dialogue bubbles and audio file. On a mechanics level, they also had to learn how to photoshop their faces onto a graphic, learn how to record an audio file, and create a QR code. To me, this is an impressive feat for students and its a great way to get them to use technology with intent.
Integrating Active Learning
It is integral to keep Active Learning in mind when developing lessons. Active Learning fosters curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking by going beyond paying attention to a traditional lecture. Students need opportunities to experiment with different activities/products and discover their strengths along the way. In addition, many of the Active Learning activities depend on communication and demonstration. These two skills are vital to creating effective presenters and debaters.
It can seem overwhelming to think about incorporating Active Learning on top of all the other demands educators are faced with. Luckily, the University of Minnesota created a graphic depicting Active Learning activities from "simple" to "complex". The graphic, which is featured below, helped me generate ideas when I was creating lesson plans:
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| Source: University of Minnesota |
My Experience with Active Learning
Using the graphic above, I noted that I have used several methods of Active Learning. My go-to activities are usually a Think-Pair-Share or Case Studies. If I have more time to plan an activity, I love to do Jigsaw Discussions, Active Review sessions (i.e. Quizziz, Gimkit, and Kahoot), and Inquiry Learning. While I have not experimented with it yet, I have seen a rise in "virtual fieldtrips" due to remote learning. This would be a cost effective way to have students have an experiential learning "trip"!
I spent some time looking at past lessons and compiled examples of Active Learning for this blog! You can access my activities (some with student's work) by clicking on the hyperlinks:
If anyone has any questions about my resources, just comment below!
Citations:
1. Malhiot, K. (2015, May 5). The American Revolution: It's like we were there!. Ms.Malhiot's Math and Science Page. http://msmalhiot.weebly.com/blog
2. Prodigy. (2021) The 22 ultimate virtual field trips& tours for students. https://www.prodigygame.com/main-en/blog/virtual-field-trips/
3. University of Minnesota. (2022). Active Learning. https://cei.umn.edu/teaching-resources/active-learning
Thank you for your thoughts on active learning and on this project, Lauren. I liked your suggestions and reflection and thought the layout of your Padlet was great. For clarification, however, the student assignment did not call for them to photoshop their images within the historical scenes. The students had to create a visual summary of the content they learned and then record a piece about that summary. They took it upon themselves to represent their learning "as if they were there." Your points are valid, and this could have led to a great discussion about the ethics of doing this. In reality, however, it was a lesson that had the students engaged with the content which in turn helped them connect to the material. There was no ill intent on their part, or their teacher.
ReplyDeleteHi Professor! I know the teacher nor students had ill intent with this. It is just something I noticed happening in other situations with historical instruction. My intent was not to chastise the instructor since I think activities like this does make history come alive.
DeleteAlso, I should have re-worded my explanation a bit more. Their figures and/or faces were photoshopped on existing images, so I should have said images instead of "scenes". Apologies for that!
Thanks for your insight.
Hi Lauren! Thanks for your post. Teaching history/social studies was always a favorite of mine because of how hands-on it can be, but I agree there is a line to consider when choosing activities to bring to life. I thought this teacher did a nice job of incorporating 21st century skills into lessons about our past- that can be tricky too! It was great to see that this Active Learning lesson tied in technology and teaching students more than just the basics.
ReplyDeleteHi, Lauren!
ReplyDeleteYour post was incredibly detailed. Thank you for sharing your ideas and experiences with active learning. I thoroughly enjoyed looking over your padlet board. Although I do not teach history, I found this quite organized and thorough--not to mention that I would have very much enjoyed a lesson like this one when I was in school. It was creative and a great way to get students engaged. I know there may be some backlash on content--perhaps that can be avoided with point out on where you, as the teacher, draw the line on what content is used for this assignment.
-Teresa