Weimer, Maryellen Active Learning: A Practical Guide for College Faculty (0912150610)

Active Learning: A Practical Guide for College Faculty

Interest in active learning on college campuses has grown dramatically in recent years. While no one sees traditional classroom practices ending, active learning has become a sought-after mode of instruction that is reshaping the way students learn and teachers teach.

As with any promising but disruptive change to established norms, making active learning work efficiently can be problematic. Instructors have to know how to restructure their lectures to allow for more frequent interaction. Students need to be shown how to respond and participate in this new learning dynamic.

Fortunately, it's easier than ever to learn from instructors at schools across the country who have integrated active learning into their classes. Their experiences and best practices for achieving success in active learning have been collected in a definitive, comprehensive resource: Active Learning: A Practical Guide for College Faculty.

Whether you are new to active learning or have some familiarity and want to sharpen your proficiency, you'll find knowledgeable, reliable answers in these pages. This collection covers fundamental topics pertinent to active learning, discusses common problems, and provides solutions and options. Active Learning: A Practical Guide for College Faculty gives you incisive insights, including how to:

• Facilitate learning with discussions
• Manage heated, sensitive, or difficult classroom conversations
• Incorporate active learning into the online classroom
• Encourage experiential learning
• Handle informal writing assignments
• Use a quiz to jumpstart active learning in large classes
• Assign students to the right groups
• Choose and use group activities to foster learning
• Integrate learning assessment techniques into your classes
• Facilitate and assess small group activities

Culled from the experiences of fellow educators, this book provides unique clarity. Developed by faculty for faculty, it can help you

• Integrate active learning for the first time in your classroom
• Hone your current active learning practices
• Reach student-centered teaching goals with greater class involvement
• Introduce, manage, and fulfill group work objectives

This collection of authoritative articles is written in clear, accessible language for efficient comprehension. It includes an introduction by Maryellen Weimer, PhD, editor of The Teaching Professor newsletter and an award-winning professor emerita of teaching and learning at Penn State Berks.

The insights, strategies, and techniques explored in Active Learning: A Practical Guide for College Faculty can help you excel with an active learning component in your classroom.