This session is part of the Higher Ed EdTech Showcase events delivered in partnership with ASCILITE. This event titled ‘Empowering Learners and Educators through Active Learning Speakers’ was recorded on 29 March 2022. Cherie Diaz in conversation with Dr Lisa Jacka and Dr Philip Uys.
You’d be right in thinking that active learning connotes activity and ‘movement’ in the learning space. And you’d be right in understanding it as the opposite of a static or passive space that we might think of when contemplating a lecture hall (remember those?) or a classroom with rows and rows of seated students behind desks.
Put simply, active learning is students participating in or interacting with the learning process. When implemented effectively, active learning strategies have proven to increase learner engagement.
And learner engagement is music to any educator’s ears.
While framed by Cherie as ‘Learn Apply Do’, Lisa describes active learning in progress as ‘students doing stuff while I’m doing stuff’, and Phillip started with the question of ‘what are learners doing while teaching is in progress?’
EduGrowth, in partnership with ASCILITE recently convened Lisa, Cherie and Phillip to unpack the magic that can happen when EdTech enters the classroom and pairs with active learning practices and learning design.
Active learning and EdTech: It’s all about the design
EdTech: What’s at play?
EdTech and measuring success
Enabling active learning for educators
Activating active learning
Active learning and EdTech: It’s all about the design
So, how is EdTech enabling active learning? Regardless of the approach taken by educators, the critical element is centering its use around student engagement to enable active learning to take place.
According to Phillip, engagement through active learning is best served with learning design as a key tool. For example:
- Pedagogy or intent
- Outcomes
- Assessment
- Activities underscored by thought provoking content
It will be no surprise for most educators to hear how vital learning design is in the classroom and keeping it there when EdTech is utilised. In sum, without learning design you won’t get student buy in and therefore active learning will simply deliver…inactive learning.
Or crickets.
Clear and simple learning design allows students to understand the critical ‘why’ in their learning.
EdTech: What’s at play?
Our teaching landscape has undergone a seismic shift due to Covid. Educators have had to accommodate shifts from synchronous teaching (real time) to asynchronous teaching (on line) and a mix of the two (blended learning). This shift has allowed the application of a range of innovative EdTech tools into our learning spaces, and it has demanded a re-examination of how we teach in this newly adjusted paradigm.
Lisa described her experience with Voice Threads which allows students to collaborate in the asynchronous space of online learning through discussion, debate and reflection. Lisa’s students reported back saying ‘they all had a voice’ in their learning, not just the loud and more confident students.
Lisa’s experience of Voice Threads created a level playing field and an empowering opportunity for all of her students to engage and to demonstrate their knowledge.
Similarly, Lisa referenced a previous use of Twitter when she and her fellow students were commenting in real time on the content given in a lecture. The Twitter exchanges created for her thought provoking content that became a meaningful extension of the lecture material.
Mirroring Lisa’s experience with Twitter was the input coming from the online participants during this forum. Among other points, the input prompted the timely question about the status of lectures.
Are lectures dead?
Phil argues that lectures do not have to be a thing of the past. ‘If they’re well designed, they can work. They can remain an element of blended learning’.
But without some sort of interactivity such as student polls, what part of learning does a lecture satisfy?
“You can’t simply lecture on a zoom. We are in a different paradigm and that paradigm demands a change in practice’.
The time is clearly ripe for discussions around a new definition of what a lecture is.
The time is clearly ripe for discussions around a new definition of what a lecture is.
EdTech and measuring success
Returning to the original definition of active learning as students ‘doing’, success can be measured by student engagement with their content.
Lisa offers that positive feedback from students is one powerful indication of student engagement. With this data Lisa has been able to see how students synthesise their learning. In addition, and much to her surprise, her students engaged in collaborative learning even though it wasn’t a part of the teaching programme at the time.
Phil offers that what the learner is ‘experiencing’ during their active learning time can be measured by analytics which helps track what students have been doing, where they have been and for how long they have been there. He adds that formative and summative assessment can provide a window to measure the success of what the student experiences during their active learning periods.
Enabling active learning for educators
Active learning in the sense of educators trying out new practices and tools can be positive and a potent space for all stakeholders.
Cherie calms what could be a highly fraught prospect by offering the introduction of innovation packaged as a pilot in the first instance rather than throwing everything out; while Lisa offers that a supportive environment for educators to experiment must be without high stakes so risks can be taken and meaningful follow up can occur.
And that failure is okay.
Phil describes that ‘change fatigue’ brought on by instigating too much change too soon common in all education settings can be alleviated by flexibility in policies, plans and general institutional governance.
He adds ‘Students need to play ball, too’.
Activating active learning
Phil references learning design in summarising the pathway to student success in active learning. It takes the form of ‘constructive alignment’ where outcomes align with activity that aligns with content with opportunities for students to reflect.
For Lisa, once barriers are removed that activity can be leveraged from the everyday learning experiences of students as a key driver of student motivation.
Active learning, engagement, success. This is clearly the pathway to empowered learning.
Active learning, engagement, success. This is clearly the pathway to empowered learning.
Speakers
Lisa Jacka
Dr Lisa Jacka is a senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland in the School of Education. She has over 18 years of experience in Higher Education at USQ, SCU, JCU and UNE. She has been an innovator in online education for most of her career with her focus on engaging learners through the integration of emerging technologies. Her PhD research investigated Virtual Worlds in teacher education to promote innovative pedagogy.
Philip Uys
Dr Philip Uys has more than 25 years’ experience in digital and remote learning in the tertiary and higher education sector. He has been an Adjunct Associate Professor Education since 2019 and before that an Associate Professor of Educational Technology; He has been a senior educational leader for more than 10 years, including leading whole-of-institution projects and working with government bodies. He holds a PhD in Communication and Education from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
Cherie Diaz
Cherie joined the OpenLearning team in 2018, where she thrives on the opportunity to leverage her experience as an educator and operational executive to partner with users of OpenLearning. In 2020, she co-authored the OpenCreds Micro-credential Framework, Australia’s first lifelong learning framework designed to meet the needs of learners, employers, and education providers. Prior to joining OpenLearning, Cherie was the Head of Education Delivery at the Australian Institute of Company Directors.