704. ACTIVITY BREAKS - A PUSH FOR PARTICIPATION
March 07, 2006
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"Since the attention span of almost all students is between 10 and 20 minutes, you can expect to lose most of your students if you lecture for 50 minutes straight. Even professionals fall victim to the "my eyes glaze over" syndrome. Not only do students tune out once that "dead" period is reached, the energy level of the class also flags. The solution might be to......"
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Posted by markep on March 7, 2006
704. ACTIVITY BREAKS - A PUSH FOR PARTICIPATION
March 07, 2006
Folks:
The posting below looks at ways to use "activity breaks" to modify the lecture approach. It is By Phillip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz in the January, 2006 issue of ASEE Prism, Volume 15, Number 5.
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
UP NEXT: Scientific Fraud, Not New, Not Rare, But Also Not Common
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
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ACTIVITY BREAKS - A PUSH FOR PARTICIPATION
By Phillip Wankat and Frank Oreovicz
Active learning makes lectures a more powerful classroom technique.
You've surely heard about active learning, cooperative groups, personalized systems of instruction and problem-based learning. But you were probably taught through lectures. What is best? Is a well-presented lecture or one of these other techniques the best learning tool?
It depends on your goals. If all you want to do is transmit information and assess the results with a multiple- choice test, then lectures do the job. The only teaching methods that statistically show that students learn better are the closely related techniques of mastery learning and the personalized system of instruction. But how many practicing engineers do you know who are paid to take multiple-choice tests? As soon as higher-order skills (designing, problem solving, communicating, working with people) are included in the assessment, teaching methods involving active learning and cooperative groups show a significant increase in student learning.
Still, lecturing does have advantages. Quite simply, it doesn't rock the boat. The professor stays in control and only has to be 50 minutes ahead of the students. And since lectures are face-to-face, developing rapport can be easier, although this advantage is lost in large classes. If the lecture format enabled students to learn higher-order skills, it would be quite a good technique.
We don't have to completely abandon lectures to gain many of the advantages that active learning and cooperative groups offer. If lecture classes are interactive so that students are not passive for long periods of time, they can be good learning experiences.
Since the attention span of almost all students is between 10 and 20 minutes, you can expect to lose most of your students if you lecture for 50 minutes straight. Even professionals fall victim to the "my eyes glaze over" syndrome. Not only do students tune out once that "dead" period is reached, the energy level of the class also flags. The solution might be to structure a 50-minute class something like this: a mini-lecture including an introduction, an activity break, a second mini-lecture, an activity break and finally a third mini-lecture, including a wrap-up. The mini-lectures contain an introduction, a body and a closing, similar to a straight lecture except they are shorter.
Activity breaks should incorporate active learning and the formation of cooperative groups. Both techniques practically force students to become involved. They can be very simple, like turning to a peer and comparing lecture notes. Alternatively, ask the student groups to solve a short problem. If the problem is part of the homework assignment, they will be more motivated to do it. Or use technology to involve your students, such as student response systems like "clickers" to obtain immediate responses to multiple choice questions. Clickers, which allow students to respond anonymously to a multiple-choice question and allow the professor to display the responses in real time, involve the students and give the professor immediate feedback on student learning. After answering the questions, you might allow students to compare their answers with one another and change them if necessary.
Ensuring that all of the courses in the curriculum are lecture/active learning classes is not sufficient-students still need laboratory, design and computer simulation courses. However, it will go a long way toward satisfying the conditions necessary to becoming an engineer.
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Phillip Wankat is director of undergraduate degree programs in the department of engineering education and the Clifton L. Lovell Distinguished Professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University. Frank Oreovicz is an education communications specialist at Purdue's chemical engineering school. They can be reached by e-mail at purdue@asee.org.
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Comments about this article: [3]
Why is the attention span of students 10-20 minutes? If known, the answer probably suggests potential remedies. If unknown, perhaps we should find out.
As a student, my attention span is often dependent on the quality and organization of the lecture.
Focusing on a few key points, rather than surveying too many topics or exposing too many details, may preserve attention. Or maybe (to be radical) we should shorten lecture times? Alternatively, relayering the key topics can fill out 50 minutes.
Posted by: Kinh Tieu/MIT on March 7, 2006 12:49 PM
Activity breaks in lecture are a challenge in areas of study that require a transfer of a huge load of information in a short period of time, such as in nursing education.
For example, in a condensed program, we have four hour lectures that are paired with a separate full day of activity labs and clinical experiences in which we need to get the students to apply the theory to practice (these days are the activity breaks).
During a four hour lecture, you certainly get plenty of "glazing over" as questions of retention and purpose arise in the instructor's mind. The hope is that the students value the target goal of passing the numerous multiple choice tests that are necessary to gauge learning in this field.
In this situation, the attention must be focused on the point another respondent made: quality of lecture. Lectures need to be scanned frequently and updated to identify outdated and extra information. This is something we tend to forget. We also need to present with a number of different learning styles in mind.
A good option for a short break is to increase sense and meaning in learning by sharing a personal experience. In nursing, this gives students an opportunity to envision theory application while establishing rapport. We have a benefit that we have followed paths similar to those of our students. This is probably the case in many profession-driven courses of study.
As nursing educators, we have a responsibility to the welfare of the healthcare system and the communities it serves. We must establish proof that we have provided our students with enormous piles of information they have retained; that is evidenced by passing of state licensure exams.
This is the problem: the necessity of longer lecture despite the findings in the literature negating its effectiveness. Although the proposed ideas are excellent, the realities surrounding health education make them seem like distant luxuries.
Posted by: CS/UMDNJ on April 7, 2006 11:13 AM
Another obvious but not "pc" answer: Get better students who CAN concentrate and have the self-control to relaize that they have a responsibility to make the effort to learn something instead of waiting to be entertained.
VJM
Posted by: Vincent Marchionni / semi-retired on April 7, 2006 01:27 PM