From the Front lines of active learning: Lessons learned from those who are trying

Abstract

Active learning is becoming more widely accepted in mathematics as a superior teaching method for student learning and, as a result, faculty are increasingly convinced of the benefits. Our study was designed to close a research gap by determining how to support mathematics faculty in transforming their instruction to active learning. We investigated actual challenges of faculty during the transition to more active pedagogy, then researched and tested solutions to reported challenges. To do so, we executed a participant observation study of six diverse faculty members from a mathematics department and followed typological analysis techniques of focus group and interview transcripts. Participants’ challenges include overcoming a dominant culture of teaching through lecture in the mathematics community, combatting a tendency to default to lecture, and acquiring specific skills and confidence to implement active learning. We suggest that specific characteristics of a robust department-wide professional development program could provide solutions to many challenges faced by faculty. This paper reports on the challenges for faculty, alongside proposed solutions through purposefully defined faculty professional development.

Appendices

Appendix A

Descriptions of Professional Development Activities

FLCs and Lesson Study. We consider FLCs to be small groups of faculty members who meet regularly and work together towards a common goal. In our case, a FLC consisted of five faculty members who met 5–10 times over the course of a semester to focus on increasing active learning opportunities for students in a given course. Lesson study (Hiebert, 2003) was used as the PD format for achieving this goal within the FLC with a group of faculty in the fall focusing on Calculus 2 and a different group of faculty in the spring focusing on Calculus 1.

In our project, the lesson studies came from the interests of the FLC participants. We asked each group to identify a lesson that had been particularly difficult to teach or that they wanted to improve. The FLC would then co-plan a 50-minute lesson, teach and observe the lesson, and debrief to revise the lesson at least two times. The first FLC meeting was held the week after all members had participated in an active learning workshop (described below). They met and co-planned a lesson on introducing power series that was taught in one of the FLC members’ classes during the second half of the semester. Three 2-hour meetings were needed to plan the initial lesson. During the lesson, the participants who were not teaching the class were observing how the students responded to the lesson. After the lesson, there was a 1-hour meeting to debrief to improve the lesson using the observation notes taken during the lesson. The lesson was then retaught in the classroom of a different participant, and the process was repeated one more time, with a final debrief after the lesson was taught the third time. Each participant that was observed taught the lesson in their own classroom. The second FLC group followed the same structure when planning a lesson on optimization, with the exception of one FLC member who taught the lesson in a colleagues’ classroom because their schedule had changed and they were no longer teaching the targeted course.

Workshops on ALM with Brown Bag Lunch Follow Ups. The two workshops offered to the entire department highlighting ALM were the following: (1) Quick Active Learning Strategies You Can Try TOMORROW! and (2) Transforming Your Classroom with Active Learning: Making Groupwork Work. The first workshop was 90-minutes long and involved faculty in using many quick active learning strategies that could be interspersed through a lecture such as wait time, think-pair-share, and formative assessments. We also included classroom videos from the second author’s class demonstrating many of the strategies. This workshop was offered at the beginning of the fall semester with a follow up meeting approximately a month after the workshop. We called this follow up meeting a Brown Bag Lunch meeting and we designed it as an informal meeting where our colleagues would share their successes and struggles in implementing one of the strategies. They learned from each other’s collective expertise by providing feedback to each other.

The second workshop was held mid-semester during the fall and was also 90-minutes long. In this workshop, faculty were presented with best practices for facilitating cooperative learning, then actively participated in a cooperative learning activity themselves, and finally reflected on the ways in which the activity did or did not enact the best practices. This workshop also included a follow up Brown Bag Lunch. All of the mathematics faculty in our department were invited, via email, during face-to-face interactions, and at our department meetings. These two workshops were also offered in the spring semester and faculty from across the university were invited to participate.

Appendix B

Analysis Scheme

Four Typologies
Typology	When to apply typology
Supports (S)	Apply typology S when a participant states something that supported them in the transition to ALM or in trying new things or supported them to attend PD.
Challenges (C)	Apply typology C when a participant states something that hindered them from transitioning to ALM or interfered with them trying something new or interfered with PD participation.
Benefits (B)	Apply typology B when a participant states a benefit of ALM or a benefit of something new they tried or a benefit of participating in PD.
Lessons Learned (L)	Apply typology L when a participant states something they learned while transitioning to ALM or through trying something new or while participating in PD.

Sub-Codes within Supports (S) Typology
Sub-Code	Description	Example Data Excerpt
S-community	feeling a supportive community in others doing ALM; note this is different from critical mass because these are specific people they are working with on ALM; critical mass is more of a sense that others are doing it where as supportive community means feeling directly supported by the people you are working with	“Having a support community of people that are still doing it makes it beneficial. If I was doing it in isolation, it would probably be a lot less motivation to make sure that I always am on track and doing these things.”
S-mass	feeling there is a critical mass, knowing others are doing it; related to visibility in the department; related to department culture; note: related to S-reminders but this is more about the culture around you	“You’re not alone if you try this. Other people have done this. It can work.”
S-reminders	having consistent “reminders” to be doing ALM; may be related to department culture; note: related to S-mass but this is more about actual reminders through PD/emails to be doing things	“The part that I found most helpful is reminders. It’s not like the whole active learning thing is new, but the fact that we are reminded about it and its usefulness.”
S-sharing	sharing ideas; learning from each other; others have critiqued your ideas so you are more confident that they are good ideas	“Whenever you do a lesson you want to know kind of what are the pros and the cons. How to best envision it. I think that’s kind of a nicer way to bounce ideas off people than trying to come with things on your own.”
S-lowpressure	not feeling too pressured to do something which is supportive because it makes you less afraid to try; also gradual and informal; mistakes are OK; not imposed	“I like that you have one more chance to try it out. We are not necessarily held accountable for anything. Just try it out and if it works then great.”
S-resources	specific materials such as the CU Boulder tactivities	“Developing resources for all different parts of a course and then putting them together and letting other people use them during that semester. So then it’s not everybody developing a set of lecture notes themselves.”
S-observations	feeling supported through observations, both being observed and doing the observing	“Going to each other’s classes. I feel that was really helpful actually because particularly if someone is doing active learning stuff and particularly if you are teaching the same class, that helps a lot. We can see the effectiveness of the methods.”
S-leadership	supportive leadership such as a course coordinator	“Having somebody that knows the important topics but also knows how to implement them well, so you have at least a guideline when you’re presenting these things.”
S-time	time to plan the course, release time, time to attend PD, etc.	“Provide some faculty members with a course release.”
S-classroom	having a classroom conducive to ALM	“The room is so big and it’s a lot easier to get around to help people. So, I think the space is needed.”
S-readings	doing readings about ALM	“You guys gave us the materials to read, those are great. Those are something that I wouldn’t have read without you guys.”

Sub-Codes within Challenges (C) Typology
Sub-Code	Description	Example Data Excerpt
C-time	it takes longer to plan for ALM; ALM takes more class time; there is too much material to cover	“Time for you planning. Time in the classroom. Time for being able to complete a lesson when you want them to be able to think. And it just takes so much more time.”
C-difficult	lecture is easier; ALM is more difficult; easy to fall back on lecture	“It’s a little bit easier, I would say, to just go in and lecture than have something pre-planned come in, do an active leaning activity, make sure the students get it right. That’s a little bit more work to me.”
C-skills	ALM requires skills/knowledge to develop lessons that are active, predict student difficulties, etc.	“Active learning, it seems like you have to have a very clear goals if you set them out on their own to do some of these activities. ‘Cause they can find the path, or they can take another path that takes them backwards.”
C-confidence	ALM requires confidence to try new things	“I think I need that peer observation of how to actually implement all the active learning techniques in my classroom because there’s so many that you both introduced to all of us and I just don’t feel comfortable doing them all yet.”
C-risk	there is more risk involved with ALM; you are relinquishing some control	“You can plan something in active learning and then implement it. And it can go great or horribly wrong. And students get more confused whereas, lecture at least, I don’t think they necessarily will get confused.”
C-rtp	ALM may not align with retention/tenure/promotion expectations; RTP expectations make faculty hesitant to try new things	“I think as a faculty member here, I think I would like to have that assurance, that, ‘Hey, even if you tried it didn’t work, you’re going to be okay. We’re not going to judge you. We’re not going to look at your [student evaluations] and say you failed at a certain thing.’”
C-resources	there is a lack of “active” materials; provided materials are for lecture	“All the resources that I essentially know are lecture based resources. Like, here’s the information synthesized in a lecture style environment.”
C-classroom	classrooms are not all setup to do ALM	“Being able to move. I found that a big challenge especially at the beginning of the semester when my room was full. I couldn’t do groups or anything like that.”
C-resistance	students are resistant to ALM or may not prefer it	“[The students] didn’t like it. They wanted me to go back to the previous method.”
C-pressure	being in a faculty learning community makes you feel pressured to teach in a way you might not want; coordination might be too imposed	“It’s always nerve wracking when you’re being observed because you feel like you’re being judged. Even though you know that’s not the point of it—it’s nerve wracking.”

Sub-Codes within Benefits (B) Typology
Sub-Code	Description	Example Data Excerpt
B-goodlesson	participant speaks about something good with the lesson we planned together	“I think, in general, our overall goal of making sure students are actively involved and manipulating and playing with series is important because that’s a hard thing. Especially when you get a power series…I think those are important things and I think they went well.”
B-studlearning	participant mentions a benefit for student learning such as students being engaged or thinking more; also classroom culture/community improved	“It’s a better motivation for students that’s the main thing I feel. Students were engaged in all the conversations and what was happening and development of it. I mean that hardly ever happens when you introduce series.”
B-collaboration	faculty feel less isolated; learning new ideas from colleagues	“The lesson that we planned together was something that I would have never really done on my own. Letting the students try it and then fail and then learn from it. So I would usually lecture them first or at least lecture a little bit before letting them try the group work. So by building that lesson study together with the community together allowed me to see that, ‘Hey, maybe I can show them a quick video.’ Let them actually figure out the process, the procedure that way they will remember it better.”
B-planning	faculty learned more about how to plan ALM lessons	“It got me, in general, thinking of, ‘okay, I should probably make sure students are using the things that I think are hard in my course,’ you know. Not necessarily just me lecturing about them. Giving them problems in the class to actually do, you know, introduce the topic and then just make sure that they work on them.”
B-gradual	faculty made changes to gradually improve teaching/lessons; also capture “informal” here	“If you want to do something you have to start somewhere, right? You have to start with one lesson and next time you would do another lesson. And the next time you will do another lesson.”
B-confidence	faculty experiencing increased confidence or bravery; feeling more brave confident or comfortable to try new things; also feeling confident to make mistakes	“Maybe just the skill set of how can I go about implementing maybe a new lesson, in terms of active learning style. I didn’t know how to implement it, really, before…without having really seen it in action I don’t know if I would have implemented it correctly. So, this gives me much more confidence.”

Sub-Codes within Lessons Learned (L) Typology
Sub-Code	Description	Example Data Excerpt
L-risk	you have more control over a class when lecturing; note: related to C-difficult	“You can have bad lecturers and it would still go okay. Because there’s a book that people can read from and stuff like that. But bad active learning if somebody’s not trained for it can go really wrong, in terms of there’s just—students just do whatever they want in the classroom if it’s not very directed.”
L-culture	it is difficult to just “drop in” ALM, Instead it must be integrated into the class; ALM may fail if just dropped in	“It can’t just be like a lesson here and there. It has to be something that’s ingrained in them from the start that this is what they’re going to do. So, I think having days like that is kind of a bit harder.”
L-gradual	making incremental improvements/tinkering/gradually shifting instruction; valuable to change a little bit at a time; note: related to B-gradual	“There’s many things that need to be changed, right? Probably in all of these courses, right?…You can’t revamp everything in a whole semester. So, focusing on one thing, I think, is good. So, you actually revamp one thing instead of doing nothing.”
L-strategy	learned how to use a particular strategy	“I tried [group roles]…It works really well. So I had just the two students working together and then one of them to be the spy. So when they’re stuck, the spy gets to go to the other group to check out things. And then come back and talk to the partner. That one worked out really well for me.”