1. Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE
Professor of Engineering, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
Visiting Scholar, University of California, San Diego

2.  What is the difference:
 A television show
that teaches about a
given subject
 A classroom that
teaches about a given
subject
Form teams of 4 or 5
Is one better than the other?

3.  Why you should use active and
collaborative approaches to teaching
 How to do active learning and informal
teamwork in class
 How to do more formal team activities
inside and outside class
 Integrating activities into the new
“flipped” environment.
What we’ll cover

4. “The initial knowledge state
of college physics students”
 Ibrahim Abou Halloun and David
Hestenes, American Journal of Physics,
November, 1985.

5. Basic knowledge of physics
 The accompanying figure shows a
hollow circular tube laid on a
frictionless, horizontal table. You are
looking down at the table. A ball is
shot into end A of the tube to leave
the other end B at high speed.
 Which of the paths below will the
ball follow when it leaves the
tube?

6. Findings
 Conventional
instruction induces
only a small change
in initial common-
sense beliefs. (13%
improvement in
scores).
 Basic knowledge
gain under
conventional
instruction is
essentially
independent of the
professor.

7. “Interactive-engagement versus
traditional methods: A six-thousand-
student survey of mechanics test data for
introductory physics courses”
 Richard R. Hake
 American Journal of Physics, January 1998
 Compared results on the Halloun-Hestenes
Mechanics Diagnostic Test for traditional
versus collaborative learning methods.

8. Failure
rates in
STEM
Freeman, S, et al. "Active learning increases student
performance in science, engineering, and mathematics."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA,
111, 23 (2014): 8410-5.
33.8%
Traditional
21.8%
Active

9. A most unusual award winner
 Judith Rich Harris, George A Miller Award for top
psychological scholarly work (APA)
 The Nurture Assumption
 Peer groups!

10. Turning attention activates diffuse mode

11. Why? (Cont.)

12. Why should you use active
and collaborative learning?
Compared to students taught traditionally,
students taught with small group learning:
 Achieve higher grades
 Learn at a deeper level
 Retain information longer
 Less likely to drop from a program
 Acquire greater communication skills
 Gain a better understanding of their
professional environment

13. Using Active Learning and
Informal Teamwork in Class

14. Active Learning
Give the students something to do:
 Answer a question
 Sketch a flow chart or diagram or plot, outline
a problem solution
 Solve all or part of a problem
 Carry out all or part of a formula derivation
 Predict a system response
 Interpret an observation or an experimental
result
 Brainstorm
 Come up with a question

15. Turn it into a team activity
 Tell them to work :
 In pairs.
 In groups of three or four.
 Give them from ten seconds to two
minutes.
 Turn them loose!
Key point—call on an individual or two
before asking for open-ended responses

16. Think-Pair-Share
 Students work on something individually
and then pair up to compare and
improve their responses before you call
on them.

17. Benefits
As little as five minutes of this sort of thing in a
50-minute lecture can produce major boosts
in learning:
 An elbow in the side for sleeping students.
 Weak students are tutored by stronger
students.
 Stronger students get the deep learning
that comes with practice.
 Poor performers are put on notice.
 Students OWN the material.

18. You can still cover all the
material you normally cover
 Put material in class handouts that include
gaps.
 Announce you will not cover details in
handouts in class—but it could show up on
tests.

19. Use partially completed notes
– fill them in by hand

20. What about large
classes?
 Large classes (75 or more students) are a fact
of life.
 The larger the class, the more important it is
to use active learning.
Key point: Students are more comfortable
and confident in groups of 3 than groups of
300.

21. Specific techniques
for large classes
 Stop activity after prescribed time.
 Call on individual students or teams to
state results.
 Overload calling on the back of the
classroom.
 AVOID calling for volunteers.

22. TAPPS
 TAPPS = Thinking-Aloud Pair
Problem Solving
 Arguably the most powerful
classroom instructional
technique for promoting
understanding.

23. TAPPS explained
 Have students work in pairs through a
worked-out problem solution or
derivation in the text or a handout.
 One explains the problem step-by-step
to the other.
 The other questions unclear statements
and or gives hints.
 Periodically stop students and call on
for explanations.
 Have them periodically reverse roles.

24. But how can I cover all the material?
 Typical course has 40
contact hours.
 You can cover 200
textbook pages a month.
 What is your objective?

25. Making your lectures
worthwhile
 Punctuate your lectures with active
exercises.
 Energizes students.
 Focuses students’ attention on the most
important points.
 Increased learning compensates for
slight loss in material covered in class.

26.  Excellent for flipped classes.
 Give a one page handout with
enough problems or questions to
be done in half the class period.
 In the other half of the class period,
give a test.
Problem-based learning

27.  And what you do teach in class can
have more impact.
Your in-class time is
reduced

28. Online is highly competitive
Silicon
Valley
Hollywood
Academia
People love it.

29. From Northwestern University Archives, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grPZLbOrvw4

30. Growth of MOOCs
Source: Class Central https://www.class-central.com/report/moocs-2015-stats/

31.  MOOCs are your competition.
Like it or not

32. Two non-problems
 The worry that some students will
refuse to participate under any
circumstance.
 The worry that the noise level during
the activity will make it difficult to
regain control of the class.

33. Comments from a
student
 Allows the students to talk openly during
class…this provides for a bit of
distraction, but most students didn’t
abuse it. Because of that, the atmosphere
of the class was not as stringent. Being
more relaxed in the classroom can be
conductive to learning.

34. Other advantages
 You’ll realize what students “get”—
and what they don’t get.
 You’re not just their professor
anymore. You’re also their coach.

35. More formal teamwork
inside and outside class

36. Key rule
 Instructors must form the teams:
 Allows those most at risk of dropping out
(new students, weak students) to form
social bonds without it being a popularity
contest.
 Reduces cheating.
 Puts the instructor in control.
 Improves later chances for students to get
jobs.

37. Landing a job
 “The Strength of Weak Ties,” Mark
Granovetter, American Sociological Review.
 “The manuscript should not be published for
‘an endless series of reasons that immediately
come to mind.’

38. Steps to forming teams
(1)
 Count off.
 Warn about no team switching.

39. Steps to forming teams
(2)
 Team Expectations Assignment:
 Unites team with a common set of realistic
expectations.
 Serves as a quasi-legal document.
 Due back in one week (just keep it on file).

40. Steps to forming teams
(3)
 Coping with Hitchhikers and Couch
Potatoes assignment.
 Have students write a small reflective
essay.

41. Empowering students
 Most instructors are unaware of how
easy it is to be fooled.
 Giving students the right to leave a
name off an assignment is crucial.
 Don’t allow students to fire a student or
leave a team on their own.
 Allowing students to perform peer
grading can be very helpful.

42. Peer rating of team
members
100 – Excellent
87.5 – Very good
75 – Satisfactory
62.5 – Ordinary
50 – Marginal
37.5 – Deficient
25 – Unsatisfactory
12.5 – Superficial
0 – No show
•Have students evaluate mid-semester and
discuss (don’t turn in)
•Students re-evaluate at the end of the semester

43. Using peer ratings—the
Autorating system
 Determine group project grade
 Convert individual verbal ratings to numbers.
 Enter numerical ratings onto a spreadsheet.

44. Individual project grade =
(team grade) X (adjustment factor)

45. Other helpful techniques
 Hand out the “Evaluation of
Progress toward Effective Team
Functioning” sheet about six
weeks into the semester.
 Sermonize occasionally.
 Run crisis clinics as needed.

46. Crisis Clinics

47. Reasonable percentages
 If homework is only group activity—10-
20% of grade.
 If an additional project is involved,
another 10-20% may be added, totally
20-40%.
 If entire course is project-based—as
much as 80%.
 Perfectly acceptable to have team
assignment grades not count if test
grades aren’t considered to be passing.

48. The team from Hades
 I’ve got a terrible team in my course—
their constantly arguing and
complaining about one another. Is
teamwork failing, or am I?
 Neither! No instructional method
comes with a 100% guarantee that it
will always work well for all students.

49. Reality check
 If you have 10 teams in your class—
 Most are functioning well.
 Most students are learning as much or
more than they did when you taught
traditionally.
 You have one dysfunctional team.

50. Congratulations
 That’s good teaching!