Tips and Tools: Teaching–Learning Strategies for Active Learning
Strategies for cognitive activation • Use pre-testing, which has the added effect of reactivating prior knowledge. • Before your lecture, let your students brainstorm on the question: “What do I already know about the topic?” • Have the participants formulate questions about the material in advance. • Follow the 20-minute rule in monologue teaching situations. Consider the sandwich principle, particularly in seminars. • Use buzz groups, i.e. small-group discussions of simple questions in between two presentations. • Have learners answer “why?” as often as possible; let them research causes, reasons, and origins in small discussion groups. • Let them find differences and similarities between new content or between new and old content (sameness analysis).
Cognitive activation is essential for learning gain. Successful learning can only be achieved through active engagement with the content. Therefore: less teaching; more learning.
4.2
Dramaturgy and Learning Activities
Which script is most likely to get the students to actively engage with learning contents? What short activation methods are suitable to “interrupt” lectures, to enable the audience to process what was said? There is a huge repertoire of methods from which to choose the most appropriate to the specific goals and content. Kolb’s “Experiential Learning Theory” In the 1980s, David A. Kolb developed a pragmatic pedagogical model with the primary aim of linking theory to practice (Kolb 1984). He presents the learning process as a spiral, starting with concrete experience and followed by reflection (Figure 20). With the help of theories, experience is abstracted and then anchored in memory. Knowledge becomes more differentiated through these steps of learning. Refining concepts, models, and theories helps to plan the next steps of action, leading to a next level of the learning cycle. This helps to optimize intuitive action routines and increase professionalism. It also leads away from inert knowledge via action competence to reflective practice.
Practice
Active experiment
Concrete experience
Theory
Abstract conceptualization
Reflective observation
Figure 20: Kolb’s learning cycle (experiential learning theory) (Adapted from Kolb 1984 by K. Herweg)
ICM or Flipped Classroom The “Inverted Classroom Model“ (ICM) (Handke and Sperl 2012, Handke et al. 2012), also known as “Flipped Classroom”, is more of an approach than a method. Its central feature is the switch between presentation and consolidation (“flip it!”). For example, in a traditional lecture, the lecturer presents the content in the lecture hall, and students work on it before or after, during self-study. In the ICM, by contrast, the presentation is outsourced in a digital format (.pdf, .ppt, podcasts, slidecasts, etc.). Students can view it individually
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