3 ms·
> "Well this method of teaching is actually not as good as other methods. Would you do that?" A university did a trial. Lecture with active learning vs tradit
by mncharity 9y ago
> "Well this method of teaching is actually not as good as other methods. Would you do that?"
A university did a trial. Lecture with active learning vs traditional lecture and sections. Simultaneous versions of the same class; random assignment of students; pre-written exams. Inexperienced postdoc vs highly-respected well-rated experienced prof. Mid-term results came in. The comment was that if it had been a medical trail, they would have had to stop immediately, rather than finish the term. It would have been clearly unethical to continue to deny the control group the intervention.
- watty 9y agoSounds interesting, source?
- mncharity 9y agoStory told by Edward Prather (Arizona)[1] at MIT[2]. I failed to quickly find an obvious publication. My recollection is the course was elsewhere, he was invited to lecture (astronomy education improvement is his thing), and said let's instead set it up as a trial, and use this student instead of me. [1] https://profiles.arizona.edu/person/eprather https://profiles.arizona.edu/person/eprather [2] http://web.mit.edu/physics/events/colloquia.html http://web.mit.edu/physics/events/colloquia.html May 11, 2017, but this link may rot soon. EDIT: I should amend "inexperienced postdoc" with "who was trained in active learning instruction, and prepared the course with a highly-experienced astronomy education researcher". Because a key issue with active learning is that doing it well, and thus deploying it rapidly, is hard.
- d0mine 9y agoDo you mean traditional lecture performed poorly?