02/13 - Active Learning

Active Learning: Engaging All Students

Prof. Doug Luckie, Lyman Briggs College

11:30am - 1:30pm, Monday, Feb. 13, 2012

in Biological/Physical Sciences (BPS) 1400

(Lunch Provided)

About the Session:

What is active learning? Does it work? If so, how can I introduce some active learning exercises into my lecture without losing too much time (and my mind)?

If these questions appeal to you and feel relevant, you might enjoy this mini-workshop on active learning. Our goal is to keep it simple and introduce a few active and cooperative learning exercises that work (and let participants share some that worked for them) so you can break up long lectures and see if students understood what you just taught them. In addition to lecture, the introduction of active learning, i.e. “inquiry,” into the classroom laboratory will be discussed with corresponding data of student learning gains.

About Doug Luckie:

Douglas B. Luckie is an Associate Professor jointly appointed in the Lyman Briggs Residential College and in the Department of Physiology at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in Molecular Physiology and completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in Human Biology. He is director of the MSU Cystic Fibrosis Research Lab and STEM Learning Lab. His research groups pursue both discipline-based physiology research into pH abnormalities and invasive pathogens in the disease, cystic fibrosis, as well as scholarship into the use of visual models, interdisciplinary discourse and inquiry laboratories to increase student higher-level learning in the sciences.

Recent scholarship:

Luckie D.B., Aubry J.R., Rivkin A.M., Marengo B.J., Foos L.A. and J.J. Maleszewski (2012) Less teaching, more learning: A 10-year study supports increases in inquiry alongside decreases in “coverage” yield steady gains in student learning of science. Advances in Physiology Education. (submitted 12/2011).

Luckie D., Harrison S.H. and Ebert-May D. (2011) Model Based Reasoning: Creating Visual Tools to Reveal Student Learning, Advances in Physiology Education, 35(1): 59‐67.

Haenisch M.D., Ciche T.A. and D.B. Luckie (2010) Pseudomonas or LPS exposure alters CFTR iodide efflux in 2WT2 epithelial cells with time and dose dependence. Biochem Biophys Res Commun., 394: 4, 1087-1092.

Materials from this workshop can be found below.

Why Peer Discussion Improves Student Performance on In-Class Concept Questions

M. K. Smith,*W. B. Wood, W. K. Adams, C. Wieman, J. K. Knight, N. Guild and T. T. Su

Abstract: When students answer an in-class conceptual question individually using clickers, discuss it with their neighbors, and then revote on the same question, the percentage of correct answers typically increases. This outcome could result from gains in understanding during discussion, or simply from peer influence of knowledgeable students on their neighbors. To distinguish between these alternatives in an undergraduate genetics course, we followed the above exercise with a second, similar (isomorphic) question on the same concept that students answered individually. Our results indicate that peer discussion enhances understanding, even when none of the students in a discussion group originally knows the correct answer.

  • 6-minute version (100MB) of Thin Air.

  • 2-minute version (10MB) of Thin Air.

  • Official site where Thin Air and other similar videos (e.g. what causes an eclipse?, what causes the phases of the moon?, can you light a lightbulb with just a battery and a wire?) are stream-able.