Guide to Teaching in the Active Learning Classroom : History, Research, and Practice

While Active Learning Classrooms, or ALCs, offer rich new environments for learning, they present many new challenges to faculty because, among other things, they eliminate the room’s central focal point and disrupt the conventional seating plan to which faculty and students have become accustomed.

The importance of learning how to use these classrooms well and to capitalize on their special features is paramount. The potential they represent can be realized only when they facilitate improved learning outcomes and engage students in the learning process in a manner different from traditional classrooms and lecture halls.

This book provides an introduction to ALCs, briefly covering their history and then synthesizing the research on these spaces to provide faculty with empirically based, practical guidance on how to use these unfamiliar spaces effectively. Among the questions this book addresses are:

• How can instructors mitigate the apparent lack of a central focal point in the space?

• What types of learning activities work well in the ALCs and take advantage of the affordances of the room?

• How can teachers address familiar classroom-management challenges in these unfamiliar spaces?

• If assessment and rapid feedback are critical in active learning, how do they work in a room filled with circular tables and no central focus point?

• How do instructors balance group learning with the needs of the larger class?

• How can students be held accountable when many will necessarily have their backs facing the instructor?

• How can instructors evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching in these spaces?

This book is intended for faculty preparing to teach in or already working in this new classroom environment; for administrators planning to create ALCs or experimenting with provisionally designed rooms; and for faculty developers helping teachers transition to using these new spaces.

Paul Baepler serves as a Research Fellow in the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) at the University of Minnesota. His role is to investigate the efficacy of educational innovations in the classroom and elsewhere in higher education. Paul earned his Ph.D. in American literature and his book, White Slaves, African Masters, (U of Chicago Press, 1999) explores the little-known Barbary captivity narrative. His work has appeared in a variety of journals including Computers and Education, the Journal of College Science Teaching, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, the Journal of Faculty Development, and The New England Quarterly. Along with Brooks and Walker of this volume, he co-edited the Active Learning Spaces volume (#137) of New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Previously at the University, he worked at the Center for Teaching and Learning and the Digital Media Center; and he is the faculty director for test preparation in the College of Continuing Education.

J. D. Walker is a Research Associate in the Center for Educational Innovation (CEI) at the University of Minnesota, where his work focuses on investigating the impact of digital technologies and other educational innovations on student learning outcomes in higher education, as well as on student engagement and the faculty teaching experience. In collaboration with CEI and faculty colleagues, he has conducted studies of the effectiveness of new, technology-enhanced classroom spaces; flipped and blended-format classes; multimedia and mobile technologies; classes delivered as MOOCs; and the social context of teaching and learning. Walker earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1996, and he taught as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota - Duluth, the University of Pennsylvania, and Franklin and Marshall College. He earned a Master of Arts degree in Quantitative Methods in Education from the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota in 2010.

D. Christopher Brooks serves as a Senior Research Fellow for the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, or ECAR, (http://www.educause.edu/ecar). Prior to joining ECAR in December 2013, Dr. Brooks served as a Research Associate in the Office of Information Technology at the University of Minnesota where he researched the impact of educational technologies and Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs) on teaching practices and learning outcomes, completion rates and the impact of MOOCs on student learning, and evaluating blended learning environments. His research appears in a range of scholarly journals including the British Journal of Educational Technology, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, the International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, The Journal of College Science Teaching, Evolution, the Journal of Political Science Education, and Social Science Quarterly, and in the edited volume Blended Learning: Research Perspectives, Vol. 2. His co-edited volume of New Directions for Teaching and Learning on Active Learning Spaces was published 2014. Christopher earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Indiana University in 2002. He has taught courses in comparative politics and political theory at Indiana Purdue Fort Wayne (IPFW), St. Olaf College, and the University of Minnesota.

Kem Saichaie is the Associate Director of the Center for Educational Effectiveness at the University of California, Davis. He leads the Learning and Teaching Support unit. He works with faculty across disciplines, and campus-wide, to integrate evidence-based practices into traditional, hybrid, and online classrooms.

Additionally, Saichaie is leading the strategic instructional development and assessment initiatives associated with active learning classrooms at UC Davis. Saichaie led similar efforts as the Director of Educational Technology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass). He has been involved with the faculty development and assessment efforts related to ALCs at the University of Minnesota and the University of Iowa, and also taught courses in ALCs at UMass and Iowa. Saichaie has published in a number of venues including The Journal of Higher Education, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Medical Teacher, New Directions in Teaching and Learning (Learning Spaces volume), New Directions in Institutional Research, and EDUCAUSE’s Seeking Evidence of Impact series. Saichaie earned a PhD Higher Educational and Student Affairs from the University of Iowa in 2011.

Christina I. Petersen is an Education Program Specialist in the Center for Educational Innovation at the University of Minnesota. She works with colleges, departments, and individuals from multiple disciplines to develop curriculum and courses that incorporate evidence-based pedagogical practices to foster student learning. Her own research interests include influences on faculty attitudes toward student-centered teaching approaches, and factors that lead to effective student team functioning. At the University of Minnesota, she has taught courses in higher education pedagogy, neuropharmacology, and scientific presentation skills courses, many of these in active learning classrooms. Petersen also served as a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at Vanderbilt University where she studied molecular mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmia. Petersen has published in Nature Neuroscience, the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, and New Directions in Teaching and Learning. She earned a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Vanderbilt University in 1999.