The Bio-Psychology Building lecture hall seats hundreds of students.
Student course evaluation comments for biology professor Patricia Shields’ first redesigned, active-learning course last spring ranged from admiration to unsubtle aversion.
Some students said, “‘I loved the Wednesday activity; I enjoyed the teaching style,’” said the BSCI105: Principles of Biology professor. “And then you get to the other ones that said, ‘I felt like the activities were big sucking black holes.’”
So far, Shields is one of 53 faculty members across eight colleges at this university who have redesigned their courses under the Elevate Fellows course redesign program to provide a more interactive, student-centered experience, said Ben Bederson, the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center’s executive director.
The redesign involved major syllabus adjustments, such as dropping and adding course material, making more exams that were worth fewer points each, adding discussions and putting the onus on students to do work such as quizzes outside of class, Shields said.
The campuswide initiative has reached 12,000 students in 44 courses so far, Bederson said.
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It’s a “small number of courses, but a big impact because a lot of the courses we’ve been working on are the large courses,” he said.
This university has an abundance of larger-sized classes. There are 385 course sections with 50 to 99 students, and 231 sections with 100 or more students, university spokesman Brian Ullmann said.
“There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of students not feeling engaged or paying much attention in a long lecture,” Elizabeth Beise, academic planning and programs associate provost, wrote in an email. “For the courses that we know about that are more engaging, it seems as though both the faculty and the students enjoy the experience more.”
Junior communication major Sarah Matzelle said her large lecture class often fails to hold her attention.
“I feel distracted all of the time,” Matzelle said. “[I’d like] a smaller class, more interesting professor, less notes. … It’s not interactive really, you just sit there and listen.”
Although some students might be wary about the increased effort of an active-learning class, Shields said students in these courses end up learning and retaining more of the material.
“Whether the students understand it or not, they really do get a lot from it,” Shields said. “Because they did [the material] … as opposed to just memorizing it for a test when it goes in one ear and out the other.”
The results Shields has seen in her classes are not uncommon. Average examination scores in active-learning courses were about 6 percent higher than traditional lecture courses, according to a 2014 meta-study that analyzed 225 individual studies.
The best teaching method is to have students put in effort to learn things themselves, Bederson said.
“It’s sort of like exercising your muscles,” he said. “You can’t become an athlete by watching someone play tennis.”
For teachers in lecture courses that have not been redesigned, such as history professor Robert Chiles, the success of the class largely depends on the teacher having the proper skill set to teach a larger group.
“You can’t just put words on a screen, because then they’re just going to ignore you,” said Chiles, adding he often uses images during his 150-student lectures for HIST200: Interpreting American History: Beginnings to 1877 and HIST201: Interpreting American History: From 1865 to the Present. “You have to have common sense. You have to know how people learn.”
Junior economics major Chris Hoffman said he learns best when the class is smaller.
“A larger class is less personal,” said Hoffman, who’s currently taking BMGT210: Foundations of Accounting for Non Business Majors. “[I’d want] more interaction with the professor … maybe have more group projects, where you meet in groups and meet with the professor in that group, and you get a little better student-teacher ratio.”
Although social-psychology professor Jennifer Wessel has difficulty interacting one-on-one with students in her 150-student PSYC221: Social Psychology lecture, she said she’s tried to bridge the divide by implementing discussions and debates, as well as tailoring her material so it resonates with more of her students.
“Sometimes I’ll bring in a current event that I think is an interesting example of something that also maybe applies to a certain demographic group that feels underrepresented,” Wessel said, noting she’s also shown different types of people and relationships in her lecture slides.
An identifiable problem with traditional lecture classes is that they can give an unfair advantage to the privileged population while isolating groups such as women, minorities and low-income students, according to a Sept. 12 New York Times article.
“The same lecture, given by the same professor in the same lecture hall, is actually not the same for each student listening,” according to the article. “Students with more background knowledge will be better able to absorb and retain what they hear.”
Active-learning classes can serve as an equalizer, Bederson said.
“It results in more equitable outcomes — that is, that you’re less likely to be helping the students that are already most advantaged,” Bederson said. “It sort of equals the playing field.”
However, some students said they are still content with the traditional lecture style.
A large lecture “gives you sort of the freedom to do work on your own,” said Zachary Schain, a freshman enrolled in letters and sciences taking ECON200: Principles of Micro-Economics. “More individual-based learning is more for me.”
