All guides: New learning spaces: Make teaching more effective

Connect to Prior Learning

"[Students] come to formal education with a range of prior knowledge, skills, beliefs, and concepts that significantly influence what they notice about the environment and how they organize and interpret it. This, in turn, affects their abilities to remember, reason, solve problems, and acquire new knowledge."
– Bransford, Brown, and Cocking, How People Learn (2000, p. 10)

New knowledge is built on existing knowledge. Thus, when you are planning a class it is important to determine what your students are likely to know coming into your course and (later in the planning process) how well they know it.

Retrieved from http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/design/yourstudents.html

Getting students to prepare for class (via Internet Archive)
(Original URL http://pactlab-dev.spcomm.uiuc.edu/blog/csandvig-class/Getting_Students_to_do_Readings.pdf)

There are a number of activities that you can ask students to do before coming to class. You could ask them to read articles, watch videos and lectures, or observe and document something in the workplace for example. To ensure that students are engaging with these outside of class activities you can quiz them on what they have learnt, conduct a poll in class or get them to chat in groups about what they discovered.

Link to readings in the library/internet or videos online is easy through my RMIT Studies.

Another popular method of teaching is ''the flipped classroom"
Using online lectures to support active learning - Case study
If you would like to create online lectures you can use Echo360 and myRMITStudies.
In class activities - Thinking strategies
Learning and teaching tools or strategies can be used to actively engage students in their learning and to engage them in higher order thinking, both individually or as part of a group. They can help students to do things like articulate what they already know, organise their thinking, analyse ideas, brainstorm, develop creative ideas, plan, reflect and evaluate, collaborate and make decisions. They are thinking routines which students may internalise if they use them regularly.

You can find descriptions of these learning activities and templates in the box on the top right of this page.
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It is important when reflecting on the completed work that students look at the learning strategy or tool they used including the purpose of the strategy/tool and the thinking focus it encourages. When students have increased their knowledge, competence and confidence in using these strategies/tools they might independently begin to use them in other contexts.
More active learning strategies

What's the latest literature?

Design your class

Need some inspiration! Use this interactive tool to design your next class. There are a number of active learning strategies/tools which you can further customise to use or you can add your own. Check it out now! Any feedback welcome. Please leave a comment.

Make teaching more effective

New learning spaces are designed to encourage groupwork and collaboration. They are also designed to easily connect with the world outside the classroom using technology.

Active learning of students in new learning spaces enables them to think deeply and to transfer their knowledge to new contexts. Active learning also engages students in original thinking. Preparing students for active learning requires teachers to carefully assess what knowledge students need in order to be able to work effectively in groups or on individual assignments. This can be done through whole class discussion, preparatory reading followed by discussion, skill training and smaller, scaffolded tasks. These may be done in class or online.

See how Arthur Shelley and Sarah Holdsworth approach teaching in next generation learning spaces.

Curriculum design is crucial in new learning spaces because the onus is on the students to build their learning and you as a teacher using your expertise both in the discipline area and in teaching to interact appropriately.

Facilitating groupwork

At university, students not only need to learn disciplinary knowledge and skills but also need to develop their 'soft skills' including those involving teamwork and collaboration so they can develop their thinking and become creative and effective problem-solvers in the workplace. Group work exposes students to different cultures, different points of view and a diversity of learners. However, groups must have something substantial to do - otherwise it lacks authenticity.

Online Teaching Assistant - Group tool - This is a fantastic resource developed by Ian Woodruf, Sandra Jones and Jacinta Ryan for students to work though together about working in teams: http://emedia.rmit.edu.au/workinginteams/

Setting up groups
Students will naturally settle into spaces next to their friends and form groups. You need to decide whether you want to intervene in friendship groups to create a different type of learning group - is it desirable to mix people up?

There are several ways to set up groups. Groups can be organised:
- by individuals based on their interests or skills
- by purposefully grouping students based on their interests or skills through there being a variety of tasks in the classroom from which to choose
- by randomly selecting students or numbering students
- by purposefully grouping students by another means
Group rules
Ask students what they believe are important rules for working in groups and get them to document them. Obvious ones are respecting one another's opinions for example, even if they disagree or that everyone commits to working productively. Other suggestions for good group strategies are how to give and receive constructive feedback to one another.
Group tasks
Ensure that the task the group undertakes is a collaborative task which stretches the whole group thinking and can be broken down into components which members of the group can complete. Take advantage of the technology in the room - students can access data and resources from around the world as well as present their materials to the class. Having a 'product' as an outcome for the task which is publicly presented and assessed will ensure greater commitment from students. Make the group process part of the formal assessment. Ensure the task is clear, has criteria and will fit the time which you have allowed.
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Group tasks will be better if students have to get together or do individual work outside of class as well as in class to complete them - this could be online through wikis and blogs, for example. This ensures greater understanding and commitment by students as it increases the amount of time on task, both individually and collectively.
Intervening in groups
Sometimes you will need to give direct and explicit instructions to students. Other times, you will need to provide scaffolds or model the task for students. Moving around the room you will be able to nudge and prompt student thinking and give formative feedback to groups. By choosing complex, holistic and authentic tasks with tangible outcomes and clear criteria, you allow the students to approach the tasks creatively and originally.

Backwards Design

As in any other course, you will need to work out how you will chunk the learning for each class and create a teaching schedule for the course/unit which will satisfy the learning outcomes. Designing activities carefully will support students' learning and help them to be able to complete the assessment. This planning is not about what you will do but what your students will do in the time allocated ie. the activities you will get them to do.

Backward design is one way to approach unit/course/lesson planning, “promoted by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in their book, Understanding by Design (1998). Teachers who create curriculum materials using this approach begin with the end in mind. They thus plan their curriculum units around these types of questions: What enduring understandings do I want my students to develop? How will I know if my students have learned what I want them to learn? To quote Wiggins and McTighe:

Why do we describe the most effective curriculum design as “backward”? We do so because many teachers begin with textbooks, favored lessons, and time-honored activities rather than deriving those tools from target goals or standards. We are advocating the reverse: One starts with the end—the desired results (goals or standards)—and then derives the curriculum from the evidence of learning (performances) called for by the standard and the teaching needed to equip students to perform. (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998, p.8)”

Retrieved from: http://www.innovateonline.info/extra/definition2157.htm

The backward design lesson plan template below also includes an example of how one teacher, Dr Anthony Bedford, taught an introductory class to Statistics and Epidemiology.

Backwards Design Lesson Plan

Learning activities and templates

Plus Minus Interesting
Students note pluses, minuses and what is interesting about a topic
Role Play
Students act out a character or play themselves in a different context
Think Pair Share
Students reflect individually on a problem, then share their ideas with a peer, then share with the rest of the class
KWL
5 Whys
Brainstorming
Muddiest point
Speed dating
Storyboarding
Blank template
You can use this template to create your own learning activity to share with others. Send to newlearningspaces@rmit.edu.au

Active Learning Classrooms

Assessment and providing feedback to students and teachers

Formative feedback
Ongoing informal or formal feedback (either from the teacher or other students) given throughout the course as students develop an assessment task.
Assessing group work
In a collaborative learning space where some of the assessment may be done through group work and peer assessment there need to be checks to ensure the reliability and validity of assessment. A mixture of individual assessment and group assessment will enable you to assess outcomes reliably. In any group assessment it is wise to ask students to assess their own input and that of others in the group.
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More information on grading class participation
Self-assessment
Self-assessment enables students to critique their own learning. It helps them to think deeply about what they have achieved and to judge their own work against criteria.
Peer assessment
Peer assessment is when students comment (and grade) other students work. It is a great way for students to benchmark against each other and more fully understand the assessment task.

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Advantages of peer assessment is that it:

- Helps students to become more autonomous, responsible and involved.

- Encourages students to critically analyse work done by others, rather than simply seeing a mark.

- Helps clarify assessment criteria.

- Gives students a wider range of feedback.

- More closely parallels possible career situations where a group makes a judgement.

- Reduces the marking load on the lecturer.

- Several groups can be run at once as not all groups require the lecturer's presence.

Retrieved from UTS - Peer Assessment
Facilitating student evaluation of the course
It is a good idea to get feedback from students regularly. You might begin in the first few weeks of the course/unit. This can be done informally through a conversation in class or you might poll students or use a reflective strategy to see how students are learning. Strategies such as the muddiest point or getting students to write on sticky notes about what they have learnt in class today and/or if they have any questions and then to post it on a wall works well for immediate feedback.

Library Learning and Teaching guides

New learning spaces: Make teaching more effective