Dr. Ava Wolf started our session with an educational technologist’s perspective on active learning, including research behind why active learning is superior for promoting knowledge retention over other forms of learning, particularly over lecture models. She also shared the various psychological factors that give students motivation to learn and how active learning plays to those factors. She finally gave us a number of tools and strategies that can be used in the face-to-face, blended, and online environments to foster active learning. View Dr. Wolf’s slides for more details.
Next, Dr. Jose Vazquez then carried on the motivation theme to both demonstrate and describe how active learning, especially as enabled via the flipped classroom model, is the first truly innovative idea in an otherwise centuries-stagnant field of education. In particular, he highlighted the “gap theory of curiosity” as a significant motivator for learning and the instructor’s role is, in part, to expose and highlight the gap in a student’s understanding so that they intrinsically wish to fill that gap through learning. View Dr. Vazquez’s compressed slides (without video for faster download) or full slides (with video) for more details.
You can also view notes taken during the meeting.
Due to time limitations, other matters on the agenda were tabled for our next meeting, which will be on Thursday, January 12.