Tag Archives: learning

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A response to the Atlantic: Active Learning Doesn’t Harm Students

The Atlantic published an essay from Christine Gross-Loh entitled, “Should Colleges Really Eliminate the College Lecture?” This follows a similar op-ed published in the New York Times, “Lecture Me. Really.” Is there someone out there assaulting lecturers? Are there colleges out there eliminating the lecture? Is there even a college out there that could force an elimination if they tried? What is this really about? There is a growing and substantial body of research that suggests the importance of engagement and active learning. This scholarship has led to calls to reduce the frequency (more importantly, the length) of lectures in favor of engaging students in the classroom. Clearly, those who believe in the power and potential of lectures feel under threat. Yet, the research is clear that the inclusion of active learning helps students learn content better. The defense of the lecture in the Atlantic essay is long on anecdotal support for lecturing and wrong in numerous ways. In response, I want to respond to a few of the most inaccurate passages as a response to the Atlantic and underline my central argument: active learning doesn’t harm students.

14th Century Lecture in Bologna
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Are college students more brilliant? The grade inflation debate

Brilliant! I loved the series of Guinness commercials that made fun of the British affinity for using the word brilliant. It is hard not to love using brilliant and I often join in after only a few days in England (resulting in much ribbing from my colleagues). Of course, the issue is that if everything is brilliant- is anything? Brilliant used to mean exceptionally good, but now it has been watered down due to overuse. All of this leads to me think of the grade inflation debate in higher education and whether today’s college students are more brilliant than in the past.

“Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily—Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity. . . One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work.”  — Report of the Committee on Raising the Standard, Harvard University, 1984

The grade inflation debate is not new.  

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Intentionally Designed Activities to Engage Students

Everyone who teaches wants engaged students. But how do we do this? There are so many buzz words out there about flipped classrooms, active learning, and grit. The research literature examining effective teaching practices has grown, yet it is largely inaccessible.  Over 700 different journals address college teaching in various forms. How can instructors wade through this to find the most effective strategies. In today’s post, I will share a few helpful formulas and strategies to create intentionally designed activities to engage students.

Les Roches International

Across different disciplines, there are a multitude of instructional approaches from lecturing to discussion to peer teaching. No matter which approach is used, students learn best when they are engaged with the course content.

Engagement doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentionally designing class to foster learning.

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Teaching and learning in a market-dominated environment

The question before those engaged in supporting general education is how to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the market. What do good teaching and learning look like in an institution operating in a deregulated and decentralized marketplace with students demonstrating consumer tendencies? How can we foster a supportive environment for general education when student consumers are fueled by a desire for vocational training for economic gain?

Photo credit: Nayu Kim

First, we should acknowledge that student consumerism and a focus on the vocational private economic good of higher education are not simply going to disappear.

These trends are ingrained in our students and the larger society, and the time for reversing these ideas is seemingly past.

Rather, what higher education must accomplish is the incorporation of general education principles within the specialized nature of teaching and research.

This is critical for responding to consumerist attitudes among students as well as the capitalistic actions of faculty (Bok, 2003; Slaughter & Leslie, 1997).

We should be addressing critical thinking, ethics, creating a logical argument, writing, and an appreciation of differences across the curriculum.

This type of approach to courses ostensibly designed for vocational purposes is possible, if not necessary, for achieving the proper professional training of vocational programs.

Viewed in this light, instruction can address the fundamental principles and benefits of general education while at the same time acknowledging the demands for job training on the part of students, parents, policy makers, and the business community.

This new conceptualization of general education is helpful in responding directly to the desires of internal and external stakeholders (while remaining true to the liberal education ideal), yet this does not fully respond to the demands of the business and political communities that often cite the graduate who is not prepared to enter and succeed in the corporate setting.

In order to respond to the concerns of the business community and the growing demands of the marketplace, students need to understand the broader contexts of their work.

As Grubb and Lazerson (2005) suggest: “One goal is to teach in more constructivist, meaning-centered, and contextualized ways, following the idea that students need to be better prepared to understand the deeper con- structs underlying practice” (p. 17).

The business community contends that too often the graduates they employ were trained in universities devoid of practical concerns and dominated by research-centric curricula and faculty.

As critical stakeholders in the future support of colleges and universities, political and business leaders are demanding the creation of a competently trained workforce.

This is achievable with an improved nexus between theory and practice.

General education concepts judiciously brought to bear through the use of interdisciplinary courses, service-learning classes, and pedagogical innovations can bridge the gap between the purely intellectual and solely practical.

A renewed approach to problems in this way leads to satisfying the concerns of the market and its consumers.

Furthermore, it solidifies the role of liberal education as part of the solution.

Excerpt from Out out, damned spot: General education in a market-driven institution