DeAnza College/CIS2/Spring 2009/Seven Principles for Good Practice/3. Encourage active/engaged learning

CIS2 Computers and the Internet in Society : Winter 2009

What is Encourage active/engage learning?'''
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- Encourage active/engage learning is learning by thinking, reflecting and doing. - It's a way for students to do more than just listen to a lecture. And also a way to increase student’s retention in term of knowledge and interaction with the materials and others.

-Active learning is something that we experience and those experiences charge our brain and help us remember the activities we did.

-Students using computers to do what professionals do with computers.

-Initially setting and continually refining expectations (of a course) with students http://www.edutechie.ws/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/cone_of_learning_web.png

Why is active engagement in learning important?
- Growing demand in the business world as students look for jobs, the employers wish to employ people that can affectively engage in the working environment, work with groups, set group goals and have the ability to reach them.

- Education reform suggests that active learning with allow students to make the knowledge gleaned from active engagement their own.

- Encourage students to raise pertinent questions and formulate effective answers for those questions, and enacting the "right" approach and/or solution to solve the problem(s).

- Active engagement in the learning process. It reinforces concepts and principles as the student are learning, thus raising their retention and recall for later use by the student.

http://www.edutechie.ws/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/cone_of_learning_web.gif

Is “Encourage active/engage learning” being enforced at colleges and universities?
- Active and engage learning is currently used in many colleges and universities. One of which is University of California, Santa Cruz, Econ 136: Business Strategy class. Professor Mary Flannery is constantly using active and engaged learning to instruct the class by using the following methods:

o Using the business strategy game, case studies, group discussion, and real-life guest speaking to engage learning.

o Asking students to reflect on their opinion and support their argument based on the lecture and real life experiences

o Using peer review in a business strategy game to review how much each members contributed to complete the task

o The concept of Active/Engaged learning, I believe, is a goal of most colleges and universities, but this ideal is difficult to achieve homogenously across the spectrum of a university setting. That said I have seen these concepts encouraged and in use, but for every instance of that I can also illustrate an example of the old “regurgitation education” paradigm that is the opposite of this technique.

Other methods used at various colleges and universities consist of:

o Collaborative learning groups either short or long term.

o Games like jeopardy, or crossword puzzles.

o Keeping a journal entry.

What will be the important global social and technology issues in the next 3-5 years?
o	The global social issues in the next 3 to 5 years;

	Amount of retention for a student from the traditional in-class environment vs Active/engaged learning through interaction with technologies.

	The current social issues for active learning are being perceived as the change from traditional instruction. This is a welcomed change from the traditional memorization school of thought.

	Many instructors are seeking way to bring liveliness to their classroom. To have more class participation/interaction and a better retention rate associated with multiple learning modes that are utilized.

o      Another social issue involves “Active Learning” is that it’s not easy to implement. This is true because the paradigm shift from a traditional instruction model to a more “modern” instruction technique. This shift not only has its technological challenges, but is quiet hard for faculty (and students alike) to embrace the new ways. All learning involves a teacher and the student(s). The teacher must be able to effectively communicate on the subject so the student can gain and retain the topic taught. Students demonstrate mastery of the subject they’ve by exams. However, after the exam the student is more likely to forget what they have been tested on. Education reformers are pushing for active learning so that they student can learn more and further retain much more of the subject. This is the case if more interactions during the learning process occurs. This is proven to occur with more modern approaches of active/engaged learning using technology such as computers, Internet, Applications,etc. Unfortunately, there are still barriers to adoption issues (change is hard)for students, instructors and institutions. Also, there are skeptics that question the practice and efficacy of active learning techniques in the classroom and the success of these type of programs so far.

o	The technology issues in the next 3 to 5 years will be the use of computer and the internet to promote learning. Online courses are gaining popularity and web-based lectures and seminars (webinars), digital medial and recording, etc are becoming more widely available and as this digital transition occurs the active/engaged learning cause will be bore out.

What role will computer and internet technology play?
•	Technology is of paramount importance in Active learning because active leads to interactive. Technology helped active learning possible by using computers, internet, applications and much more.

o	Below are the possible technologies that are available to students on everyday basis

o	 Where? Colleges and Universities campuses, Home, Library, Internet

o	Tools? Computers, Laptops, PDAs & Smart Phones, iPod, iPhone

o	Applications? Websites, Online forums, Educational games: (i.e. Business Strategy Game/Business), specific Computer based training/simulations, Blogs, Online News Forum, Catalyst, Email, Microsoft Office: Words, PowerPoint, Access, Excel, Acrobat Adobe, Adobe PhotoShop

•	Website: Websites are commonly used to surf the internet. People surf the net by entering web address or website name: Google.com, Yahoo.com, Digg.com, MSN.com… etc. These are all the common search engines that everyone uses to find what they’re looking for. Students use these search engines to look for information for school works or projects.

•	Online Forum: When students are looking for a certain topic, most of the time they will reach a forum that’s talk about the topic. Students can post a question in the forum and someone with the answer will more than likely to respond at any given time. It’s very popular nowadays for people not just students to go to forum and read what’s being discussed. There is nearly a forum for every single topic available and you will almost always find huge communities ready to help you research.

•	Educational Game: Business Strategy Game, this is a tool that many business classes are using to allow student to have a firsthand experience to manage their own company and compete in the industry with others. The game consists of many teams in an industry ranging from Shoes Industry, Shampoo, Make-up Industry… etc. Students are to make corporate decisions to manage and lead company towards a positive future. This is a highly competitive game that allow student to critical think, collaborate, and make essential decisions. Students are encouraged to ask questions, raise questions, and post ideas in an active group discussion among the team members.

•	Blogs:(weB LOG): Blogs allows people to log and write down what they are doing or what happen. Everyone can use it as a journal to keep track of their everyday life or even their activities. Most people would use blog to express their thoughts, findings or even researches. CIS 2 students from De Anza College are using blogs to log their community learning project.

•	Online Learning Applications : Applications like Catalyst (De Anza) and Blackboard (CSUEB) are what colleges and universities use for online classes. Most of the online classes at De Anza College are taught using Catalyst .Instructors use this application facilitate the courses and students use it to participate in the class by reading notes, doing online discussion, look at website that instructors suggested, submit works and projects, etc. These online Learning Applications are an example of active/engaged learning.

•	Email: Email is very important communication tool. Students, professions, and businesses are using email to communicate, exchange ideas, send information. De Anza College instructors using email to communicate with students as the prefer methods than phone. Students can communicate with fellow classmates. It’s a useful tool that encourages student’s interactions with other students and instructors.

• Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office includes a variety of tools that we can used: Words, PowerPoint, Excel and Access. These applications played a big role in active learning because students are able to type instead of write; they can create slides with pictures and animations with PowerPoint, and that encourages them to pick out the important concepts and be creative with the presentation; Excel allows students that are doing complex calcuations, and accounting, manipulate and organzed data, as well as, graphing and creating detailed reports; Access allows students to create their SQL database and key and manage large amounts of data in a certain way. These tools has become the fundamental in basic technology knowledge in school and for workplaces.

• Adobe Acrobat: this application allow you to open and save PDF files(commonly used by instructor for lectures, and notes), Adobe Photoshop allows students to edit pictures, multi-medias, artworks to incorporate to what they are learning.

Will the impact of technology be positive or negative?
o	The impact of technology is positive for active and engaged learning because of the amount if interactivity and engagement of the student with fellow students, and the interaction with technology will help students to make significant contribution to the groups knowledge while allowing the student to broadening his educational expirience in the process. o	With the use of simulations and computer based connectivity a newer level of learning is achieved. Who will benefit and how?

o	Everyone will be benefit with active/engaged learning because learning will not only be just from books and lectures, but more hands on, an interactive and high tech approach will encourage students to want to learn more and retain more of what they learn!

Who will be hurt?
o	I believe that active learning can benefit everyone instead of hurting anyone. Well, besides the old school guard who are unwilling or unable to adapt to this brave new world. As we advance into a new century, many have already shifted from traditional to active learning. Those who are behind might not get the benefit of the new way of learning.

Who is driving the use of technology around this issue?
o	Everyone is the driving force for the use of technology. With today standard, everyone is technology savvy. The younger generation is exposing to technology at an early age. The use of technology in the next 3 to 5 years will be the base of their learning. o	I beleive the absolute want/will of people to learn and expand their minds as well as having an basic opportunity to learn, is driving this use of technology in the active/engaged learning.