Active Learning, a Tool to Improve Learning and Retention

Active Learning, a tool to improve learning and retention

Abstract After 20 years in teaching, I attended a workshop on effective teaching sponsored by the Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education in which I studied the instructional technique called active learning. When I returned to my university I implemented the technique in my classes and found it to be extremely effective in improving my students’ learning and retention of the subject contents.

Active learning means getting students to do anything in class other than watching and listening to an instructor lecturing. Working individually or in small groups, they may formulate responses to questions, solve problems or parts of problems, critique solutions, propose experiments, brainstorm lists, or anything else related to the subject of the course. The method is based on the well-established cognitive principle that humans cannot remain focused on anything for long while remaining passive. It is neither more difficult to implement nor costlier than traditional lecturing, and an extensive research base demonstrates that it leads to livelier classes and greater learning. I have closely observed the teaching methodologies practiced at various undergraduate and postgraduate colleges offering courses in Engineering, Computer Science and Management, and conclude that nothing precludes using active learning in any class. All that is needed is a little training for the instructor. This article describes active learning techniques and offers suggestions on how to make the technique as effective as possible.

Introduction Having put in more than two decades in teaching, and teaching at various levels, I was not all that happy about my sessions. Though I was doing quite well according to the feedbacks from students and reviews from the management, my constant endeavor was to gain technical knowledge, explore the subject and help my students by making them strong technically was not quite reaching them. Despite my earnest efforts, I could see my sessions used to became boring sometimes and students would become inattentive. Students in general resorted to last minute studying for exams and they did not have the habit of reading textbooks. I succeeded in arousing the interest of some of them, but still I was not able to achieve what I wanted. I wanted each one of my students to participate in the learning process. I wanted to know what their problems were, so that I could help them. Although I received positive feedback for my efforts, deep inside me there was a feeling that something was missing. When I had discussions with other teachers, I realized that all of us faced similar problems. I thought this is the problem I have to live with.

It was around this time that a faculty leadership program was organized by Indo-US collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) in Mysore (May 2008). My mentor, Dr Maria Larrondo Petrie, Dean of Computer Science at Florida Atlanta University informed me about it and advised me to apply for, which I did. It was my good luck that I was selected for the program and this was a turning point in my life. My journey of effective teaching took off from there. Not only I learned to find solutions to my problems, I also learned to help others in solving their problems. Coming back from workshop, I started implementing the methods in my classes. The results were so encouraging that I continued to experiment more and more. I mailed my results to Dr Felder and his encouraging replies fueled my interest so much so that I started facilitating effective teaching workshops myself, teaching others how to implement these techniques in their classes.

One of the comments I received at the end one such workshop was “I feel as fresh as I was in the beginning at 10:00 o’clock in the morning”. I just relived the memories of 2008 FLI where I felt the same at the end of the workshop. Another interesting comment was “I missed the Felder and Brent workshop, but after attending this workshop, I think it is compensated”. Although I feel that this comment is little exaggerated as I cannot match Felder and Brent, it clearly shows the power of the effective teaching methods they advocate especially ‘active learning’.

Active learning has varied definitions given by practitioners. I would prefer to quote Felder and Brent, who define active learning as “anything course-related that all students in a class session are called upon to do other than simply watching, listening and taking notes”.

What is that I could convey in that workshop that the participants believed to be so valuable? How can somebody feel as fresh as he was in the morning after a six-hour workshop? Let us see.

The effective teaching methods that I have studied and implemented successfully have all the potential to become the backbone for any technical education. A teacher may be very knowledgeable, methodical and expressive; however, the most important point a teacher must know is that the learners imbibe the knowledge in different ways and it is always better if the teacher knows how the student is learning and set the teaching style accordingly.

It could come as a shock, but many teachers who feel that they have taught the topic in the best possible manner, may find the students’ answers for the same topic entirely wrong and irrelevant, that means their teaching is not reaching to their students. It is in these situations that alternate teaching methods that have been validated by careful, documented, repeatable research should be applied. Their effectiveness is not simply a matter of opinion. They work in all environments, including Indian classes.

In my case it worked wonders! In almost everything that I tried, my students responded quite positively and affirmatively. Of the students that were surveyed, a large percentage (95%) of the students stated that they would like other teachers to adopt these methods as well.

Let me be candid and tell you, not all methods that I will be describing are going to work in all situations. Some methods may not be possible to implement in the setting in which you teach, others you may not be comfortable practicing. You alone can decide which methods to implement and whether to use them as they are or a revised version.

This article is designed to active learning methods and how one can be trained to teach using active learning. We will look at the methods, examples and illustrations that one can initiate into training oneself. If ever you get a chance you may plan to attend an effective teaching workshop additionally. If that workshop is from Dr Felder and Dr Brent, there is nothing like it1.

I will be mentioning quite a few ideas and suggestions in this article. Most of them are based on outcomes of my own implementation of these methods. Some of them are direct results of suggestions and implementations of the workshop organized by Felder and Brent and their subsequent replies to my queries. Some part of the article is also based on my understanding of the papers written by Dr Felder and others, which I have studied at length.

Let me remind you again that this article is not about suggesting you to drop whatever you are doing and follow what I suggest. It is neither possible nor advisable to do so. This article suggests some methods that have the potential of improving the teaching process irrespective of the stream of study or the geographic location and demography of the students. I advise you to go through the ideas as presented in the article and see if some of them are applicable in your case. If you are teaching conventionally (straight lecturing with little or no interaction) then there is enough scope for improvement. If you find some idea useful, please do implement it with all possible thrust. Do not try many techniques at the same time; try two or three at one go. You also need patience as some ideas take time in assimilating and producing results. If unfortunately some idea does not work in your case, just leave it at that. My first suggestion is just set aside five to ten minutes of your conventional class time for the activities that will help the student have a better learning.

Before we discuss answers to above questions, we must answer one of the most important questions, what is wrong with conventional methods and why we need an alternative pedagogy?

Problems with engineering and MCA students and need for alternative pedagogy Low student level is a favorite subject for many of us to discuss when we meet informally. The declining level of students is sometimes cited for all problems that we face in teaching them. Probably there is some truth in the complaint. The present day students are weaker than the students of yesteryear but merely complaining does not help. Earlier only the top 10% or so could make it to getting admissions in Engineering or MCA courses which is not the case now. They were inherently good students; they had the ability to learn with or without the help of the faculty. Likewise the students studying at IIT are the cream of the crop. They are capable of learning on their own. The teaching methods deployed at IITs probably do not have much impact on the result; the students are capable of learning under any circumstance. Not that I am undermining the quality of teachers at IITs. They may be extremely knowledgeable and the best. The point I would like to focus here is that these teachers hardly have any idea about the level of students that the other teachers have to deal with and the problems faced by them. The techniques that are adopted by some teachers of making students work at highest conceptual level and pass tests that are impossible, don’t work here.

1 Alternatively, you can try attending one of my workshops! The problem probably started with the British educational system being adopted by India after independence. The system was such that only top one percent or so could get admission to such courses. In such a scenario, even highly inadequate teaching methods can produce results. Engineering colleges or MCA institutes today are not teaching students of the same high level as used to be once upon a time. Now the question is, can we afford to write off this generation and wait till we get better students? Unfortunately, we cannot. The solution lies in dealing with these students irrespective of their levels of understanding. If the conventional method does not help there is enough research suggestive of alternate methods to make things work. The plain lecturing mode, which is most common in education, is found extremely inadequate for learning. One great solution to improve learning is active learning. I have studied about active learning in the workshop I mentioned earlier. I have implemented active learning with other effective teaching methods and found exceptional improvement in the learning and retention levels of the students. Before we discuss effective teaching methods, let me answer some questions that you might have about these methods.

What are these methods? Are they difficult to implement? Do we need state of the art technology to implement them? What is their cost? Can I use them in my subject? Do I need training to implement them? These are some of the questions that may occur to you.

Answering the questions, firstly, the methods that we are going to discuss here are based on the well- established cognitive principle that humans cannot remain focused on anything for long while remaining passive. Thus it is very normal for a student to lose focus on what is being taught. Although physically present, his mind may tend to wander. He might be thinking of something that happened at home, about his friends or about the food that will be served for lunch. At times he might realize that he is away and try to consciously come back, but with little luck. Active learning is basically engaging students in some activity so that their mind does not wander and they remain focused on the lecture. The activities should be between half a minute and two minutes that involve the entire class.

The answer to the second question, whether these methods are difficult to implement2 is no. Consider the scenario where the teacher poses a question to the class. The only difference is that instead of asking students individually, in active learning the class is divided into small groups of three to four students and the question is posed to the groups. Some time is given to the students to think. After discussing in their group, they can answer the question. Although there are various ways to implement active learning, this is the simplest way. When to ask such question, what type of questions to ask and how much time should be given to get at the solution are some issues that we shall discuss shortly.

The answer to the third question probably would be a surprise to many. We do not need state of the art technologies to implement any of these methods. Old chalk and talk method probably is good to start with. PowerPoint slides are not banned in these methods but warning is shown against converting our classes into PowerPoint shows. Dr. Felder and lot of other researchers’ outcomes clearly indicate the

2 Active learning is simplest and most powerful method to implement according to my observation. Additionally, one can gradually learn to implement lots of other effective teaching methods without compromising either quality or the length of the syllabus. dangers of excessive use of technology. However, the active learning methods that I use and describe here do not need any technology as a prerequisite.

Answering the fourth question, there is absolutely no cost involved! All these methods are quite easy and need only pen and paper sometimes and a little enthusiasm and faithfulness to try out new methods in one’s own classes. The required preparation time is not excessive. You need to pick topics that students usually find difficult, prepare an active learning exercise for those topics and compress some other part of the session to complete everything in time.

The answer to the question whether this methodology can be implemented in the subject you teach is also in the affirmative. I have seen this method being successfully applied in the field of computer science, management and computer engineering. In fact there is nothing in this technique that prevents it to be applied to any field3. You may try some idea that sounds interesting to you and fitting for your case. It is impossible to assess each individual’s situation and give a method exactly tailor-made for that situation. Instead, the general ideas presented here can be helpful for anybody with slight modifications.

The answer to the last question—whether training is required—is also affirmative. We believe that we need to be trained only in the subject that we are teaching. After acquiring technical training or degrees in our respective subjects, we are thrown in front of students and left to battle on our own. When we have no alternatives, we tend to apply the traditional style of pure lecturing; talking, explaining, showing and everything that our teachers used to do. In my opinion a little training (of about a day) is enough for any teacher to initiate himself in active learning4.

In India, there is a vast difference in the level of students studying in Government colleges and self financed colleges. The problem of quality of student at SFIs is much more severe than at the government colleges. A good teacher, teaching a below average or underperforming group of students need additional measures. What I can understand from my own experience is that one can overcome quite a few of the problems using active learning techniques. A little training can pay big dividends.

The next section describes what an active learning is all about and some examples to demonstrate the applications of active learning in the class.

3 I have few attendees of bio sciences, English, mathematics, and varieties of engineering branches as my workshop attendees. In most of the cases, they find some way to implement active learning in their classes. There are lots of other examples that you can find from Dr Felder’s web site (www.ncsu.edu/effective_teaching) about applicability of these methods to all branches of engineering.

4 I have conducted many workshops where I had two to three hours on active learning and during the rest of the workshop I used it to teach other topics. I was convinced about active learning methods in the Felder and Brent workshop not only by their arguments but also more by their demonstrating it throughout the workshop. The active learning Let us take an example to understand what active learning is. I will pick up a domain which (hopefully) all of us are familiar with - computer networks. Suppose I am teaching students a topic called MAC or medium access controller. I may go ahead and describe that sometimes we have a network where there is a single communication channel shared between nodes. Now I ask students to predict different ways to have communication between different parties. I tell them to organize themselves into groups and take some time, say one minute to discuss different methods to solve this problem. (The time can be anything between 30 seconds to three minutes depending on the question and the level of the students. Longer durations are not advisable; we shall discuss why soon). After that I ask some of them to present their solution and then discuss them in the class. Gradually the discussion switches over to MAC protocols in a way that the students would learn it in a far better than conventional way.

Another example, I say that the wireless network 802.11 provides node-to-node (DCF) direct communication and additionally communication via access point (PCF) is also possible. I also tell them that both are possible in the same cell at the same point of time, I tell them to find out how that could be possible. This time, I tell them to think individually for one minute and after that, I instruct them to find a partner to discuss their solution with. I sometimes get a group which could find correct answer (prioritize the communication) In fact, if the student works on the problem and solves it successfully and is able to generate a correct answer from the discussion, he owns it and learns the thing in a way that is impossible when the teacher explains the same information5. The active learning also is beneficial to those who fail to get the answer. In my own case, I have found that when a student fails to get an answer and then the answer is given to him, he pays much more attention to the solution would normally occur. A student may find the topic simple and straight forward when it is delivered in the lecturing mode. He may not realize which part of the topic is simple and which part is difficult 6. When the difficult part is given as active learning exercise and he is unable to do it, he would realize that it is difficult and pay enough attention or even bother to ask a questions if in doubt.

We use the Andrew Tanenbaum book which states six different protocols of increasing complexity to describe how communication takes place with two parties. When I am discussing this topic, I describe the concept and working of the protocols in general and then tell the students to form into pairs (not necessarily with a friend with whom they are comfortable with but with others sometimes). In each pair, one plays the role of a questioner and other one tries to answer the question. They are given two to three minutes to read the portion of the program (which I found difficult to explain conventionally) and generally instruct the questioner to try finding out question, which he expects the examiner would ask and try to see the response. He or she is allowed to explain the correct answer if the other student replies incorrectly. When both of them are not able to decide, they call me for explanation. After that,

5 This is also due to one more important cognitive principle that people learn more by saying and doing rather than listening and being explained.

6 In my opinion, so many teachers work so hard on making those difficult topics seem simple that when they present those topics, student hardly feels the complexity behind the concept being learned. Only when the student start working on solutions based on that topic he realizes the complexity. the roles of both the students are reversed and a new part of the program is chosen for the next case. Here also, when students are engaged in questioning and answering, they will be able to look at the topic in more detailed way and have better learning. They are also able to find out their problem areas and can take my help. This is an example of student centric learning, where student find their problems and take teacher’s help unlike teacher doing it himself. Student centric learning also is proven to be a better technique than teacher centric methods.

Yet another example, I describe fiber optic cable and UTP cable and tell them to organize themselves into groups, decide one person from the group as a recorder and list as many as possible differences between these two cables. In the end, I would list the differences given in the book and they are sometimes surprised to find a difference author has forgotten to write!

What is common in all these examples? First, students are given some time to think over the problem and finding a solution. Almost all problems have no definitive answer and I am bound to get multiple answers, some of which are likely to be correct. What do I achieve out of this? Let me explain.

Research in the area of education is suggestive, and all the teachers would agree that a student is not able to concentrate on any subject longer than few minutes. An interesting study was given in M. Prince, "Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research." J. Engr. Education, 93(3), 223-231 (2004). It shows that the attention drifts away from the subject or teacher with time. Maximum number of students remembers only those few things discussed initially in the class. The 70% attention in the beginning part is reduced to nearly 20% at the end. (This is the result of a typical study, the numbers used (70% and 20%) here vary depending on subject, the teacher and the students but decline in attention is invariable). What is the solution to this problem? One of the solutions that worked in my case (and plenty of others) is active learning. According to the survey that I conducted for my own class, the attention and retention of students improved due to effective teaching methods that I deployed. Interestingly, they found active learning as the best method out of quite a few deployed.7

The teacher who implements active learning does not do away with conventional lecturing. The only additional thing he does now is to halt once in a while, initiate an active learning exercise that should not take more than few minutes and start all over again. This can be repeated a few times. The number of possible active learning tasks is limitless. At a minimum, you can ask the same questions you would normally ask in your lectures, with the only difference now you’ll get the whole class trying to answer and not just the same few rankers who feel it is their moral duty to answer questions in the class. There are no laid down rules of when and how one should introduce active learning exercises, it depends on teacher’s discretion. The total time given to active learning in a 50-minute class can be as little as 5 minutes8 but still it can make big difference in the learning process. Sometimes students need to wake others up and drag them into discussion. Below average students will be tutored by better ones. The 7 I have tried minute papers, organizing the lectures according to different types of learners, inquiry based learning and few other things as effective teaching methods.

8 Initially I wasn’t spending more than 5 to 10 minutes in active learning but when I am teaching more conceptual part, sometimes half the time of the session is spent in different exercises. When I use TAPPS while teaching them protocol functioning, sometimes the entire class time is utilized in active learning. good ones get the benefit of teaching others so their own understanding improves to a large extent. The benefit to the weaker student is obvious.

The next important benefit of active learning is involvement of students who otherwise would generally shy away in the class. When I organize students in groups and ask them to find out the answer, solve a problem or discuss merits and demerits of something, students who are not generally attentive have to start thinking what I want them to. I always pick up some students at random to query and only in the end pick up volunteers. When students realize that students are randomly picked up to answer the questions, they tend to discuss and learn from their friends in the group even when while they lose their attention in the class. This is to avoid humiliation of not being able to answer. Sometimes, because they are able to express their views to their friends and if their friends appreciate them, they generate courage to express their ideas to the teacher when asked. I am able to pick up almost any student at random and invariably I get some answer, albeit wrong sometimes. I am able to penetrate the wall which separates so-called dull students and a teacher most of the times using active learning.

Quite importantly, as a side effect of all these exercises, they learn two things. First, it is possible to have multiple answers to a real world problem and sometimes, their may not always be a definitive answer to all the problems. The context of the problem decides the better or a workable answer. My students were initially surprised to know that there could exist a situation where there is no definitive answer to a problem9. By now, they have realized that real world is full of such problems. Second important thing that is achieved from these exercises is that they have learnt to solve problems in groups—that is, they have learnt the art of teamwork. As I insist that groups of arbitrary students work together, they undergo the process of adjusting to each other. Sometimes students, particularly who are better than others in the group, complain that they have to spend lot of time making others understand what they could understand easily. I do not require much time to make them understand that they learn something at the deepest possible level when they teach it to someone else. When they make an effort to explain to the others, knowingly or unknowingly they may use multiple techniques and try to gain multiple views of the problem and the solution, so in the bargain, even if the person does not understand it, they will surely gain from it. They may not need to read that topic before the exam. They understand their gains and this increases their enthusiasm to participate.

Quite a few of my students are weak in English communication and have an extremely poor vocabulary. They are not able to understand plain English spoken by the teacher in the class. When I break for active learning, they are able to discuss the point in Gujarati or Hindi and are able to catch up with the others.

I guess by now you have a fair idea about what active learning is all about. Let me discuss how one can deploy active learning effectively.

9 Most of the students think that all questions have only one answer that one should write to get maximum marks and also, all questions must have an answer. Both of these myths are broken when they encounter real world problems. Deploying active learning and advantages of active learning The first thing that one must do is to understand that conventional teaching does not address higher three levels of bloom’s taxonomy10. If we want to make our student industry-ready, they need to possess the art of analysis, evaluation and creation. Our teaching, books, exam papers, classes hardly covers them. The examples I discussed related to active learning above showcases how one can address analysis, evaluation or creation. The teaching techniques do not make them an expert in either of them but introduces them to it. When I give assignments, which need all three arts, they are better equipped to solve them. Likewise, when I ask similar questions in the exam, they are better prepared to answer them11. Though only two batches are out who can testify whether my methods are successful, the initial indications are in favor of this approach.

Once the teacher is clear about the type of questions that may be asked, half the battle is won. If the student neither thinks over nor works hard to answer them, it is not worth the effort. My experience is that usual approach of asking questions on cold does not work. Most of the students are not in a frame of mind to answer the question despite knowing partly or fully what the correct answer is. This is due to the fact that answering question in public is always difficult. One would always fear that if he were wrong, it would be humiliating. Thus despite our attempts to encourage them, most of the students prefer to remain silent, they avoid direct eye contact. If forced to answer, it provokes more fear than learning.

Instead, if we put them into groups and then ask the question and give them time to think and discuss over, the table turns. The same fear that prevented them to answer provokes them to think and listen to anybody in the group and is ready with the answer when the teacher asks them to do so. The popular speech about importance of wrong answers can also be emphasized here in a better way. For example after completing the sixth protocol of Tanenbaum book, which describes the protocol with selective repeat, I ask my students something like this “can you suggest any modification which makes this protocol a little better? I will give you two minutes to discuss”, I get lot of wrong responses, like avoiding sending directly to receiver and broadcast to all channels, or dynamically find out receiver every time we are transmitting and so on. I may describe MaNets in brief and then say that both of these things are actually useful in a different case like MaNets but not in wired and fixed world.

A similar example is that of a MAC layer. When I describe how the MAC layer works, I usually ask them whether retransmission should be included at this layer, or what should be the ideal frame size, can you decide how one can decide about an ideal frame size and so on, and I get difference responses. Some students answer in favor and some against. At the end, I discuss both Ethernet and Wireless MAC layers and describe that something which is fine with Ethernet (long frames and no retransmission) is not so for wireless (short frames, even fragments and need for retransmission). The stress here is on telling that no answer is completely wrong or completely right unless the complete context is specified. Such

10 Benjamin Bloom classified contents to teach in six different categories, lower three are remembering, understanding and applying, higher three are analysis, evaluation or judgment and creation.

11 I also provide them a study guide with learning objectives before each exam, which also was a suggestion from the workshop, which I found to be extremely successful. discussions make them bold in answering without worrying about the validity of the answer. Such discussions are also useful for me as I get much more varieties in answers than before. Sometimes I even outline the process on the board. I usually tell them that the correctness of answer is not important. I am not looking for best answers too. I tell them that I need to get as many answers as possible.

In some cases, I write down every answer that I get from students on the board and prove that even the author fails to take account of all the points that the class can produce in that short duration. For example when I discuss fiber optics and UTP cables and tell them to collect differences, some differences that are not directly mentioned in the book also come to the surface. This proves to be quite encouraging for them.

One more thing I have seen working is to purposefully place those questions in assignments and also on the study guide. I feel more assured of getting better answers once I have made them discuss those issues in class.

Other important reason in favor of using active learning in the class is to see that entire class in involved in the process of thinking what we want them to think. When you give them any active learning assignment, almost all of the students start thinking about the problem at hand 12. This is particularly useful for a large class13.

The active learning is also useful for those who will have to take sessions at the later part of the day, the time when the students are mentally tired and least responsive. What I usually do is to tell students to recall what is done in previous session and write down as many points they remember. I usually give them two minutes in the beginning. After that I pick up students at random and collect different topics that were discussed in the previous sections. The summarization of the previous session is done in a way that everybody including those who feel tired and lost is energized to take part in the proceedings. I earlier used to summarize previous lecture myself and was never as successful. Two-minute exercise in the beginning of a class serves two purposes for me. Firstly, it summarizes the previous lecture and secondly, it shakes up the students, getting them ready for the lecture14. This is one more example of student centric learning.

This article does not focus on different types of learners and their needs (which is an important prerequisite to learn some of the effective teaching techniques). But for the discussions that follow, I would like to mention that there are quite a few categories in which you can divide learners 15. One of the categories in which you can divide your students is active learners and reflective learners. I would

12 Sometimes some students do not get involved in the process, but if in conventional approach we get only 20% students attention and here 99%, it is still far better.

13 My classes are usually of size up to 60 but sometimes when I conduct workshop for a large crowd, which once went up to 350 participants, I could see that almost all of them are involved in the process. Without active learning, it was not possible.

14 Teaching a subject like computer networks, which is considered to be a very hard subject, and at the end of college hours, I used to have best attendance due to active learning. like to elaborate on it a little. An active learner is the one who would like to mingle with others and do things. He cannot work alone and gets frustrated when passive for a longer period. In contrast, the reflective learners prefer to work alone and think hard before jumping to some answer. Active learners would prefer to do things and then try to understand from the outcome of what they have done. Reflective learners would like to check everything before they jump into anything. Active learners would like to actively engage in an activity. They also like being in a group and discussing and solving problems. Reflective learners prefer thinking alone, but they would not mind discussing one-on-one in a pair.

An activity in a conventional class is the teacher speaking, weaving hands, drawing figures and (sometimes) moving here and there but student is not involved in the process and an active learner loses his interest soon. The reflective learner does not have any chance to reflect onto anything that is taught in the class and he starts feeling uncomfortable there 16. On the contrary, when we use active learning, active learners enjoy talking in a group and reflective learners like taking time to think over a problem. Thus active learning activities helps both the types of learners and almost all students would like it.

Active learning methods One method that I stressed in the beginning is converting usual question answering process to active learning process. I have also stressed on asking a higher bloom level question. What are the additional things that can be done during active learning exercises? Plenty, depending on what you think is useful at a given point of time. Here are a few examples.

 Let the students recall what is discussed in the previous session(s). This works best while conducting workshops. The session after lunch is the right time for this exercise to make the participants wake up and be with the conductor of the workshop.

 Generate a question from the material given. For example after discussing introduction to different layers of networking, I ask students to frame two to three questions they expect me to ask in the exam. They sometimes come with questions I would never ask or some questions that I invariably put on the study guide. My responses teach them what is expected to understand from the topic and sometimes gives insight for preparation of the subject.

 Sometimes I give them a sum to solve and help them solve it. There are certain things that I have not done in my class but one of my (active learning workshop) students who is a mathematics teacher practices. He solves some sums in the class. After that, he gives handouts with more solved examples. The solved examples are almost completely solved but for the critical portions. He gives students some time to solve as many such problems and fill the critical

15 You can refer to “index of learning styles” on Dr Felder’s web site to find out which type of learner you are. You can also advise your students to help them find out their own category.

16 In my surveys, almost half the class is active and remaining half is reflective. You may think that you are little on either side, some part reflective and some part active, but you still have a preference for one, which decides your learning style. parts as possible. Rest is to be done in homework. One more thing he does is, he stops in the middle of some derivation and asks the students to guess what could be included there.

 One of my favorite queries is to ask students to find example or application of what is taught in the class. For example when I teach Go Back N and Selective Repeat both, I tell them to find out where one can use Go Back N.

 Sometimes I ask them when a particular protocol could fail or why a specific program does not produce what we need (for example why protocol 3 could not work in a long haul fiber optic network or when a program does not contain a sequence number it cannot have retransmission logic)

 I hardly draw a complicated figure or a table on the board. I almost always draw a simplified version on the board. What I do after that is to tell students to look at page in the book and look at the figure there and then discuss later. I have seen that this helps students bind themselves with the book and it is easier for them to find answers to questions of study guide later. Most of my students are poor in English and have a habit of avoiding reading textbook as far as possible. Sometimes I tell them to look at level 1 material (something that I want them to just read and remember for the rest of the discussion or the exam) without giving them enough time to read entire thing. I almost always summarize that part while they flip through pages and quickly finish that part. This helps me save time to be later utilized in active learning exercises.

 For teaching something as complicated as protocols, I prefer to use TAPPS (thinking aloud pair problem solving), I have discussed about how I do that earlier in the article. The depth of understanding that my students are able to get wasn’t possible with my extreme efforts using classical methods before.

This list can go on. As mentioned before, one can think innovatively to produce newer and more interesting activities. One more teacher whom I have taught active learning uses role-play where each member of a group is given a specific role to play and learn from it. He gives some topic of general interest to the groups of student to comment and then leads them to the topic on hand. One such example is he would start talking about a house to be extended. He provides the students with a specific description of a house and then asks them to find out varieties of needs which demands change in the design of the house (for example adding a room or a balcony or a bathroom etc). He also discusses with them the consequences of such changes in the design. In the end, he relates all those conclusions to issues related to building computerized systems and modifying them.

One similar technique I used to work at is telling my students to think about this problem. “There is a group of students. All of the students have to take part in a group discussion of some sort. We must see that only one person speaks at a time, and we must also see that everybody should get a fair chance of speaking. “

Now I ask students to design a solution for this problem. I get varieties of solution for example a centralized solution like a teacher coordinating group discussion. I also get solutions where student themselves decide some protocol like raising a hand and then speak. I also get other suggestions of restricting a student to some short period like 2 minutes after that they pass on to some other student who is interested in saying something. Other suggestions provided are like one must not interrupt a student who is speaking currently and so on. Later on, I drive them to discussion of how LANs operate and whatever they have discussed, they enjoy finding useful in design of one or the other LAN.

Implementing active learning Right on the day one, session one, I convey to my students that I am going to teach them ‘unconventionally’ by asking questions or something similar, giving them some time to think over and allowing them to talk in the class to their friends to get a solution17. I usually also mention, that their seniors liked it very much, when I implemented similar things in their class. They are usually in touch with their seniors and believe me. One more thing that I also do is to tell them that they are of two different types of learners (the same thing which I discussed while discussed active and reflective learners), and these methods help both of these types learn things better. I also mention that the methods that I am going to implement will help them get better marks in the exam and a better acceptance in the industry. I usually also mention the rule of learning by doing (for example I learn the subject only when I taught that for the first time), and say that they would learn much more doing these exercises. I invariably tell them additionally that the industry wants them to work in groups and when they go out doing their project or are working for a company, they would be placed in a team and solutions would be sought by discussions amongst team members including the leader. This is a learning ground for the same.

As discussed earlier, I divide students into groups for discussion. At times I also allow them to think alone and then discuss in pair. I take care that the group size does not increase beyond four as researchers indicates that larger groups have more possibility of inactive students. Sometimes one of the students needs to write down. For example when I have already described cases like video conferencing, file download, remote login etc, I may ask them to write down which cases they would prefer using TCP or UDP, they must write some answers collectively. One group member must take the responsibility of writing all this down. The member who has the responsibility of writing is called recorder and we need to apply different algorithms to choose recorders to see that for every exercise, there is a different student who is going to act as a recorder. Some simple algorithms are, decide the one who lives further or nearer than others, or who eldest or younger etc can be deployed. I usually stop using similar algorithms after a while and let the group decide a recorder.

One important lesson that I learned from the Felder-Brent workshop is that one must not be monotonous and must not offer similar active learning exercise every time. Variety is the key to keep students interested. I go on implementing active learning after some random period without deciding previously about any activity. When student are not aware of what is coming, it keeps them interested.

17 One interesting thing I found during informal discussion with my students is that they liked to talk to others after sometime and feel restless without so. They are active learners and are difficult to concentrate or learn anything passively. There are two important things that one must take care of while implementing active learning exercise. According to Richard Felder, whenever somebody complains about active learning failing in their class, invariably one or both of these mistakes would have been committed.

The first mistake is keeping the activity longer than one to two minutes. When we give a longer period to the groups, who gets the answer earlier, have time to discuss other things like when will Sachin completes his 50th test hundred and so on and waste time. On the other hand, those who are not able to solve the problem in some short duration either decide that they will never be able to get it and start using the class time for useless discussions, or try more and more and get frustrated for such a long duration that we may lose them. So, it is a good thing to limit the activity duration to half a minute to two minutes.

The second mistake is to pick up volunteers each time. After every activity, if we pick up those who raise their hands, others will soon learn that there is no need to do what is asked. They can utilize activity time to discuss things about next world cup or Miss Earth contest or something similar, knowing well that at the end of the activity, when you stop them, somebody will raise hand and answer the questions and the class would proceed further. They will not be compelled to answer and thus do not think what you want them to do during the activity. That is why, we must pick students at random first, and then pick up volunteers if need be. When we pick them up randomly, they realize that they can also be questioned at the end of the activity and will be compelled to think and discuss what we wanted them to.

When you run short of time, as some percentage of time would go towards active learning exercises, you can speed up by providing students handouts related to course material that they could read in the class. I usually tell them to read few passages from the book or look at a table or a figure. This saves some time that I utilize implementing active learning exercises.

One more important hint about active learning is to find out where students are going to face difficulty learning and give that topic in active learning. As a teacher you must have pointed out similar topics in your course. One good thing to start now is to think of a topic or two in the subject that you going to teach next semester. The topics should be such that whenever we try teaching those topics it difficult for the students to understand. Now decide which active learning method you would like to use there. Try implementing that exercise later in your class and see what you get as a result.

Before you start implementing active learning let me tell you one thing. It takes a while for students and you to adjust to this new thing. Slowly, the initial awkwardness will be over and you along with your students would start enjoying it. It requires a little patience. Gradually students will be comfortable and you will also find yourself more inclined to use active learning. Certain students object to active learning. They refuse to listen to the teacher and either give a blank look or avoid eye contact. Certain others refuse to participate in group-discussions. What is the solution to this problem? Let me ask you a simple question, in a conventional class, what do you do to students who are not interested in learning? Most of us would ignore them18. That is what I recommend in this case too.

18 Dr Felder’s web site discusses few similar cases of student misbehavior and better ways to handle them. Answers to queries and concerns about active learning At the end of the active learning session during my workshops, I usually have some queries that are repeatedly asked by the participants. There are concerns from teachers as to how they would get the time to implement active learning activities, as it would take the share of time allocated for finishing the syllabus. Other concerns are whether this can be implemented in a large class having the strength of 100 odd students. Yet other concerns are would this not lead to indiscipline in the class. There are some fears that the management would not support such activities and the students would not be enthusiastic about it as they are exam centric and active learning activities would not involve discussion related to examinations.

Let me answer the questions, first the syllabus completion problem, since this seems to be a concern for quite a few. Let me quote Richard Felder’s answer “A teacher’s job is to uncover and not cover the syllabus”. If a teacher thinks that his job is to discuss each and every sentence of the text, draw each diagram on the board or write all functions of a program being taught, it is difficult to convince him to use active learning in the class. If you think this is the best approach to teach, then try considering this suggestion. You may prepare a handout containing everything that you feel is important and would want to write it on the board. Distribute these handouts to the students in the beginning of the class. Whenever you want to refer to, ask them to read from the handout19. Students learn faster from handouts as compared to the black boards. This method saves time, which can be used effectively for the activities20. One more important thing that you can dare to do is to take feedbacks to gauge the effectiveness of your method. Research is suggestive that mere syllabus completion does not improve learning. It just gives a false satisfaction to the teacher that he has done his job.

There is no doubt that the active learning exercises take more time than the conventional teaching system. If the concern were just to complete the syllabus, a better alternative would be the use of presentation slides. Whether teaching with the use of aids like this is effective or not is a debatable issue. If our motive is to present the complete content of syllabus before the students prior to the examinations, then we are successful doing so using this technique but if we want our students to absorb something out of it, we need to think twice before doing so. If our objective is to improve the student’s learning, this is not a preferable alternative. Let me state the important principle that people acquire knowledge and develop skills by practice and feedback, not by teacher explaining them and showing them something, as in conventional teaching; most students do not practice anything nor give feedbacks. They are just sitting there, listening to the teacher or most of the times rather not listening to him and just physically remaining present there. Most of them would learn as much as other students who are not attending the class and reading the material presented in the class. In fact when a teacher deploys active learning; when students are asked to do something in the class, it energizes them and

19 Dr Felder’s website contains some handouts that he prepared for his class

20 One more thing I observed is that most of the students, when teacher writes on the black board, are more interested in copying the content in their notebooks rather than learning them. Giving handouts solve that problem and they can pay more attention to the topic. helps them focus on the important topics being discussed21. That gives students practice in doing things that they are expected to as homework and exams. Students get immediate feedback to their work and thus learning occurs.

It is better, if one decides which part of the subject is most difficult for the student and what is there which a student can read himself and can learn without even being mentioned in the class 22. A teacher can always make student learn more by giving more time to difficult parts and lesser or no time to simpler parts. If need be, he can decide which active learning exercise is most suited for that hard part and use it. Thus the teacher is required to uncover the mysterious parts of the syllabus and have faith in student’s ability to learn the simpler part himself. In fact, I know quite a few of teachers who are able to understand this and able to stress on the harder topics. Comments like “this is a question frequently asked in the University Exam” or “If you know this, the rest is easy” or “Please pay little more attention to this part, this is tricky” generally works for such teachers. They spend more time on topics, which they know students would struggle to understand and less on topics, which they expect, students can study themselves. Such teachers can add active learning in their armor to improve their student’s learning for the difficult part. That is the meaning of uncovering the syllabus. So, my suggestion to those who care about the syllabus and covering it, to use the handouts or the text book, categorize simple and hard parts of the syllabus and spend time using active learning for the difficult part and less on simpler part. It is essential to step away from the habit of covering every bit of body of material in the class; it definitely does not help the student’s learn.

The next prominent question is about the class with a large strength. More the number of students in the class, more difficult it becomes for the teacher to pay individual attention to all the students. When a class has lesser number of students, it is easier to have interactive sessions. When we implement active learning, it becomes easy for engage almost everybody inside the class. I have never been required to take sessions for a large class but I have conducted few workshops where participants were 100 or more (In one case it exceeded 350). Whenever I gave active learning exercises in those classes, I used to get almost all participants thinking and working on the topics I wanted them to. The sessions were a little noisy, but that I guess is a smaller problem as compared to teaching in a class where the students are not mentally present.

Some concerns are that this will lead to indiscipline and they would lose control over the class if the students were allowed to talk or do something other than listening to them. It would also deviate from the point of discussion. This concern is sometimes with teaches who may be addressing a smaller class too. To answer this question, suppose we conduct active learning activity and two to three students out of 50 do not take part seriously. In that case, the 95% students are thinking what you want and discussing and learning what you want, if the rest 5% is not doing so, it is again a far better situation when the 20% of the lot thinking what you want in a conventional pure lecturing. In real world there is

21 One of my student gave a feedback that these methods does not let him concentrate on anything other than the topic at hand

22 One good way to measure which part of the syllabus require you to just remember things, like definitions and put it on handouts or refer to the text for such material and do not spend much time on those topics no panacea; we cannot have a method, which can address 100% of the class. The only thing that we have in our hand is to try to reach as near to that figure as possible, which is possible using active learning.

In my experience when I worked with large audience, I have never had any problem of bringing them back with me with a request “all of you back with me please”, I do not think you would have it either. Also, if the students are so engrossed in your exercise that they take time to come back, it is a complement and not a sign of worry.

The point about indiscipline I think is subjective. If students talk about movies or cricket in the class, it is apparently indiscipline, but when they talk the topic that you teach, it is definitely not. I have also pointed out how you can make sure that your students discuss what you want and not what they want.

The other question about University set up and almost no control over the examination pattern is quite understandable. The engineering colleges affiliated with Universities have the syllabus designed by board of studies from the University, the question papers are set from University and the University awards grades. Thus teachers are hesitant to stress on higher bloom’s level, as the University exams do not have that in their list. The students are also weaker and less motivated so they need more practice and feedback, thus little time remains for other things. This is a serious problem. Anyway, one more observation that I have is that weaker section of students more appreciate effective teaching methods and especially active learning as it makes them interact with other, better students, in their own language, and have chance to express themselves. I have some cases where students who used to remain shy and silent in the class, have changed and started participating. The active learning exercises gave them the opportunity probably they are waiting for. Some of my students said they realized their own potential of thinking and solving problems only after successfully completing some exercises. Let me briefly mention one such case. I had to teach a small group of students who failed in their B. Tech course in a very reputed Institute. The techniques that I discussed here (and few more which I studied in the Felder and Brent workshop) were applied to that class and the results were unbelievable. All of them passed and few of them really excelled in their course. I would rather put the issue this way. When you have underperforming and weak students, your teaching abilities are at test and you can pass that test with flying colors if you take the support of active learning.

The last point is about your management disliking you doing things can be answered as follows. I agree that sometime management would tell you to stick to the syllabus, cover everything and expect you to get the best possible results in the University examinations. Even in that case, if you are able to showcase the potential of active learning and if the student feedback is in your favor (which quite a few of my workshop attendees testify), the management will not only allow you to continue with these techniques, probably they will instruct other teachers to follow suit. In some cases, though, the management is so reluctant that you might not feel working against their will. In that case, what you can try is to sprinkle active learning exercises during your conventional lectures and see the student response. When you get a better student feedback and somebody asks you how you achieved that, you can reveal secret of your success. Some of my workshop attendees did something similar and it worked. I hope I have been successful in introducing active learning. If you have any queries, you may refer the references listed below or visit Dr Felder’s web site, alternatively you may contact me on my email address [email protected].

Happy teaching! Happy active learning!

Acknowledgements I must acknowledge Dr Felder and Dr Brent’s contribution in my growth as an effective teacher and a facilitator in effective teaching. I must also acknowledge the help and encouragement that I received from Dr Krishna Vedula, Executive Director, IUCEE. I am also am thankful to Dr Maria Petrie, my mentor from US who informed me about the workshop and also for informing me about different workshops where I can present my papers. I also acknowledge the help of my former student and a faculty of MCA at SJPI, Gandhinagar, Ms. Dolly Sansowa for editing this article to have a far better shape than what it started with.