3 Ways to Avoid Mistakes With Active Learning

This week's Guest Blogger is Christina Burden .
Christina Burden is a doctoral degree candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Neuroscience. She has a strong interest in innovative teaching and making time in the classroom effective for students with all learning styles. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory in honey bees and how toxic chemicals disrupt these processes.

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One of the strengths of active learning is the potential for helping students bridge the gap between a library of facts they must memorize and a conceptual understanding how those facts fit into a working biological system, like a neuron generating an action potential. I do not have a magical formula for creating active learning exercises that morph students’ understanding of a concept from a “mental fact library” to a “mental IMAX.” But, I will share three principles I use to help me avoid some common mistakes that can reduce the effectiveness of active learning exercises.

1. Emphasize the correct building blocks
1. Problem: When beginning an exercise, students are grappling with a lot of new information and may have trouble identifying the relevant information for the exercise.
2. Solution: Help students over this hurdle and build the factual foundation for the rest of the exercise, without directly identifying the relevant pieces of information out of their mental fact library, by using a series of review-style questions.
2. From baby steps to dancing – it doesn’t happen overnight
   
1. Problem: Many students have not developed the critical thinking skills required to move from a mental fact library to working concepts, so when they are presented with a problem that requires integration they respond with merely a conglomeration of facts they think may be relevant.
2. Solution: Begin with simpler straightforward application problems. As the students get more familiar with the material and accustomed to more integrative activities, increase the problem difficulty and the amount of information they must integrate to find the solution. This encourages critical and integrative thinking skills development through out the term.
3. Note: When challenging students with difficult problems, give them opportunities to learn from their mistakes and not just be penalized by them. One way I accomplish this is giving them the opportunity to resubmit questions they answered incorrectly with an explanation of what the correct answer is and why it is correct. If their answer is satisfactory, I give them partial credit for that question. This turns each mistake into a learning opportunity.
3. Keep it simple to keep the focus
   
1. Problem: It is easy to build elaborate exercises that lose the original focus or try to accomplish too much at one time. At least, this is true for me. Students can easily to get lost in the complexity of the exercise or the details of using the technology and miss the concept I was trying to teach.
2. Solution: When designing an active learning exercise, I ask myself what form of exercise will best illustrate the concept I want students to grasp. Some concepts are best taught with just a simple series of questions leading the students through the concept building process. Other concepts require videos, simulations or other technology for me to get the point across. Regardless of the format or technology I use, I keep every element of the exercise simple and focused on the main concept.

What ideas and principles help you 
design active learning exercises?