When I teach I have always tried to challenge myself to evolve and improve the way I teach. One of the basic fundaments is to activate students in the classroom.
“Students do not learn much by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments and spitting out answers,. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves.” (Chickering and Gamson, 1987)
Therefore I try to combine active and blended learning inside and outside the classroom. One of the hype the last years has been Flipped learning (Bergman and Sams, 2014) is often combined with active learning where (video) lectures are viewed before class and instructor-facilitated face-to-face time in class is used to interact with students. I feel that this term is a bit overused, it does not improve learning just by providing a recorded video instead of the lecture if you don’t do something active in the meeting with students, or as Jensen et al (2015) state:
“the flipped approach offers no additional benefits to student learning over a nonflipped, active learning approach.”
I really like the approach of Campfires in cyberspace (Thornburg, 2004) where students move between different learning spaces, campfires (information), watering holes (conversation), caves (concept), and life (context). In some way, through blended learning, we have to provide them with all these interactions.
So how can active learning and blended learning be implemented?
Implementation of active and blended learning
In one of my courses, we have an introduction to programming, we are using micro:bit because the online version is very good, with a lot of examples, tutorials and online demonstration videos.
It was also one of the few programming environments where you easily can switch between block programming and JavaScript.
It also has a very nice simulator where you can share your project (see example below).
An example of very simple programming in micro:bit.
Use A and B buttons do move the ship and press pad 0 for the lazer;-)
Normally I do this in a classroom with computers, because of coronavirus we had to do it online, so I just sent out some links to micro:bit.org and told them to play with the simulator before the lecture.
When preparing for the lecture I was experimenting with different setups in zoom because I need to switch between my presentation and the microbit.org website (where the programming and simulation are performed). I found out that it was quite messy to switch between Keynote (using several embedded videos with audio) and Chrome, so I remember that it is possible to export Keynote presentations (with videos/animations etc) to HTML so by using this I could just share my Chrome browser and effortlessly switch between the Keynote presentation and the simulator.
A short video explaining how I switch between the LMS,
Keynote presentation and the micro:bit simulator.
Zoom-support
In the normal classroom, I can easily go between the students and recognise ones that have problems. In zoom, this becomes more tricky.
First I created one break out room for support with the rest of the students still in the main meeting. Using this approach I had to recreate the support room each time I invited a new student and that was quite messy because I can’t unassign a student back to the main room.
My final approach was to create two breakout rooms, one for the whole class and one for the support questions. By using the two break out rooms it was easy to move people between the main room and the support room.
Reflection
In the end, I think it worked out quite nicely, several students had already tested the software and followed some instruction videos.
Helping the students is actually easier with zoom because in a classroom I will stand behind the student and have difficulties to see what they are doing. Using screen sharing I have no problem to see everything and I have to instruct the student on what to do instead of doing it myself (that I often do in the classroom). Also instead of hanging over the student and pointing to the screen, we are facing each other and that is much better.
REFERENCES
- J. Bergmann and A. Sams, Flipped learning: Gateway to student engagement, International Society for Technology in Education, 2014.
- A. W. Chickering and Z. Gamson, “Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education,” AAHE Bulletin, vol. 39, no. 7, pp. 3-7.
- J. L. Jensen, T. A. Kummer and P. Godoy, “Improvements from a flipped classroom may simply be the fruits of active learning,” CBE—Life Sciences Education, vol. 14, no. 1, 2015.
- D. D. Thornburg, Campfires in Cyberspace: Primordial Metaphors for Learning in the 21st Century, International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Vol.1. No.10. October 2004
