An Interview on Active Learning with Dr. James Eison

Writer(s): 
Katharine Isbell, Miyazaki International College

While visiting the University of South Florida (USF) in February, 1997, Katharine Isbell had the opportunity to talk to Dr. James Eison, co-author with Charles Bonwell of Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom (1991). Dr. Eison is the founding director of the Center for Teaching Enhancement which strives to facilitate the instructional improvement of USF faculty and graduate teaching assistants. There, he works closely with instructors to promote the use of active learning instructional strategies.

You wrote in your book that many educators at the tertiary level do not have a very good understanding of the term "active learning" which you define as "anything that involves students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing" (Bronwell and Eison, 1991, p. 2). Have you seen any change in this situation since your book came out in the early 1990s?

In my opinion, many positive and visible changes in higher education settings have begun to occur. The ERIC database now includes "active learning" as a descriptor term; a simple literature search using the two key terms of "higher education" and "active learning" identifies over 700 articles published since 1988. More and more campuses in the U.S. are sponsoring faculty development workshops on active learning. Increasing numbers of faculty have come to recognize that listening to instructors' lectures will not help students achieve fundamental liberal arts goals such as learning to communicate skillfully in written and oral forms, engaging in critical and creative thinking, making informed value-decisions, and behaving in ethical ways. In addition, over the past decade, an increasing number of campuses have begun significant initiatives to involve students in such things as collaborative, cooperative, or team learning projects, learning communities, service learning, or internship experiences.

How can teachers who are unfamiliar with active learning begin using it?

First, I'd remind teachers that the term "active learning" refers not to merely one thing, but rather to all instructional strategies that involve students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing. Active learning embraces a wide range of instructional activities that students can do either individually or in groups. Further, these activities can be done either during class time or at home. These two dimensions provide teachers with a large mix of different instructional possibilities to choose from.

I personally recommend that teachers begin with what Chuck [Charles Bonwell] and I have described in our book as "low risk" active learning activities. Low risk activities are: (a) relatively brief--they do not require too much class time; (b) clearly structured--the tasks are well defined and described in writing; (c) involve course content that is relatively familiar and concrete--students commonly have greater difficulty working with unfamiliar and abstract course material; and (d) familiar to students or which students have been given adequate opportunities to learn--students get better at using active learning approaches with instruction and through practice.

Let me describe one low risk active learning strategy that teachers who primarily use lecture approaches and are unfamiliar with active learning can begin using immediately. It is called the "pause procedure" and it involves pausing for approximately two minutes on three occasions during a fifty-minute lecture, i.e., every 12 to 18 minutes. During the pauses, students work in pairs to discuss and rework their notes without instructor-student interaction. This procedure has been shown to significantly improve students' short term and long term retention; in one study the mean score comparison between the pause procedure treatment group and a control group was large enough to equal two letter grades (Ruhl, Hughes, & Schloss, 1987).

Does active learning require more work for the teacher?

The use of active learning strategies requires a somewhat different type of course planning and preparation. Instead of asking, "What important information should I cover in today's class?," active learning practitioners are more likely to ask themselves in pre-class preparation: (1) "What knowledge, skills, and attitudes do I want students to examine and employ?"; (2) "What exercises or assignments can I have students complete to demonstrate their understanding of, skills with, and beliefs about important course content?"; and (3) "What instructional materials might I prepare to help maximize student effectiveness and efficiency in achieving these important learning outcomes?"

What are the students' responsibilities in an active learning environment?

In "Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson assert

Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just by sitting in class listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences, apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves. (1987, p. 3)

This perspective suggests the following set of responsibilities for both instructors and students. Faculty might be expected to: (a) create a classroom climate that is conducive to and supportive of students efforts to engage in active learning; (b) design challenging instructional activities that actively involve and engage students in learning course content; and (c) provide detailed supportive and corrective feedback to students about their progress and accomplishments. Students in an active learning environment might be expected to: (a) prepare course assignments in advance of class sessions; (b) attend class sessions regularly and participate actively; and (c) when possible, offer detailed supportive and corrective feedback to faculty about ways to make learning more effective and efficient. Both faculty and students should be willing to take risks as they collaboratively explore this alternative way to approach teaching and learning.

How do students benefit from active learning?

Active learning instructional approaches place greater emphasis on developing student skills than on instructors transmitting information. Students will be more likely to engage in higher order thinking (analysis, synthesis, evaluation), and problem solving and student motivation will increase. In addition, students can explore their own attitudes and values.

Can active learning principles be applied to large classes of 60 or over?

While some active learning strategies are clearly less appropriate for and less effective in large classes, a large number of low risk active learning strategies can be highly effective in large classes. For example, "Think-Pair-Share" (Olsen & Kagen, 1992) is a brief collaborative learning strategy that can be used in very large classes to encourage students to be reflective about course content, to foster higher-order thinking skills and to stimulate both small and large group discussion. A Think-Pair-Share exercise often begins with information that is initially provided to students through a reading assignment, a short lecture, or a videotape. The instructor poses a question and provides a few minutes for students to privately reflect about the question and to note their response in writing. Students then turn to a partner and share their responses. This can end the sharing or the pair may turn to another pair and share again in groups of four. The instructor may select some pairs to share their responses with the whole class.

There are dozens of published articles that describe other types of active learning strategies, including discussion techniques, writing activities, informal small group work, role plays, and demonstrations in even the largest of classes.

Can the same amount of material be covered in a course using active learning techniques as compared to one using "traditional" methods?

Faculty who regularly use active learning strategies typically find other ways to ensure that students learn and master assigned course content. For example, one can readily focus, direct, and monitor student learning of important course content through the use of frequent at-home reading and writing assignments and through the use of well-designed periodic classroom examinations. Then, instead of using class time to present an oral version of class text, active learning advocates use class time to engage students in further exploration of course content by providing unique and valuable experiences that can only occur when the instructor and students are assembled together as a group.

Japanese high school teachers have to teach to a national curriculum where a certain amount of material needs to be covered. Do you think it is possible to use active learning in this situation?

Whether there is a nationally prescribed curriculum or an instructor- or department-defined curriculum, active learning strategies are best viewed as a large repertoire of instructional strategies to maximize student learning and success. In my experience, the implied incompatibility of "covering course content vs. "actively involving students" is simply not valid. As Alexander Astin (1985) has noted, "Students learn by becoming involved . . . Student involvement refers to the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience" (pp. 133-134). Thus, we should anticipate that increased time and energy devoted to the completion of well-designed course activities and assignments will give rise to increased levels of student achievement.

Japanese education is notorious for lectures and student silence. However, the Ministry of Education has stated through its Curriculum Council that beginning in 2003, teachers will be expected to change their methods of instruction to become more experience- and activity-based. Nurturing self learning and the ability to think as an individual will be emphasized. In practical terms, how would you advise them to proceed? What kinds of processes need to be in place for this goal to be realized?

Reading selectively within the resources that exist is an excellent place for many faculty to start. In addition, highly effective faculty development workshops on this topic are created when a workshop facilitator skillfully demonstrates and models ways to maximize participant learning through the use of active learning strategies. I have described in greater length my thoughts on how this goal can be realized (Eison, Janzow, and Bonwell, 1990). I personally have been involved in facilitating programs and I know from post-workshop participant feedback that such events can make powerful contributions to a faculty member's ongoing development as a classroom instructor. Depending upon setting and context, these programs have varied in scope and length from 90 minutes to ten days; the longer the time frame, the greater the level of faculty change and transformation one might expect.

Dr. Eison concluded the interview by stressing that active learning does not equal group learning or group grades. Active learning activities must include a way to measure individual accountability. He also cautioned that students must be taught how to work in groups. Instructors using group activities for the first time are often not successful because they fail to take this into consideration. And finally, he urged all teachers to try active learning strategies in their classes, claiming that a successful experience will convince them to use these strategies more frequently.

 


References

 

Astin, A. W. (1985). Achieving educational excellence. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bonwell, C., & Eison, J. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom (ASHE ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1). Washington, DC: George Washington University.

Chickering, A. W., & Gamson, Z. F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin, 39(7), 3-7

Eison, J., Janzow, F., & Bonwell, C. (1990). Active learning in faculty development workshops: Or, practicing what we teach. Journal of Staff Program and Organization Development, 8(2), 81-99.

Olsen, R. E., & Kagan, S. (1992). About cooperative learning. In Carolyn Kessler (Ed.), Cooperative language learning: A teacher's resource book (pp 1-30). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.

Ruhl, K. L., Hughes, C. A., & Schloss, P. J. (1987, winter). Using the pause procedure to enhance lecture recall. Teacher Education and Special Education, 10,14-18.


Katharine Isbell is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Culture at Miyazaki International College. Her primary responsibilities are to develop and teach English adjunct sections to university courses. She has been instrumental in the design of a number of courses including Applied Information Science, Applied Information Science and Environmental Issues, and Art and Environmental Issues.