In this tip, we consider whether students learn more in lectures than they learn in active participatory learning activities.
Fiction. According to a Harvard study, published Sept. 4, 2019 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, students learn more when taking part in active learning rather than in lectures.
It is true that active learning requires more effort on the part of students. They may misinterpret this as a sign of poor learning. In order to better engage students in active learning, this mistaken belief may need to be addressed. Do this by acknowledging and dismissing the idea at the beginning of a class, possibly using the data from the study.
There is another reason why learners learn more in active participatory learning activities. In the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, all of the levels of learning indicate learner-centered outcomes: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. Lecture is trainer-centered, so it does not achieve any of the learning levels.
When trainers lecture, they are simply sharing information. They have no way of determining whether the participants learned anything. That is, unless they enrich the lecture by incorporating a comprehension-checking active learning activity. This might be, for example, a pop up, a questionnaire, a fill-in-the-blanks worksheet, a quiz, a question and answer session, or a case study.
Without the addition of an active learning activity, lecturers can only guess whether their message has been received and the participants will act on i.
If you would like to learn how to design and facilitate an experiential learner-centered training, please book a call to discuss a tailored train-the-trainer program. https://laurelandassociates.com/contact/
May your learning be sweet.
Deborah
