The last decades of research have provided massive evidence in favor of student-activating instructional practices: increased learning, attendance and engagement, stronger development of discipline-specific expert thinking, and so on. Still, a large fraction of university teachers opt out of research-based methods of instruction (surely for a variety of reasons), and those who do often report that students complain about being forced to interact, and about the increased responsibility, and raise concerns that too few answers are provided straight from the instructor. It is known that such attitudes can be shifted over time, or avoided, if students are informed about the benefits of the active classroom. However, there is still a risk that teachers reject more effective pedagogical methods from fear of receiving negative course evaluations — or even that students’ feeling of discontent would be taken as a proof that the active classroom is a bad pedagogical idea overall. In a study recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, the authors identify an inherent student bias against active learning — negatively correlated with the actual gain in knowledge — that implies a need to adress these attitudes early on in a course, and certainly not to interpret them as signs of low instruction quality.
The study was performed under controlled circumstances in two large-enrollment introductory physics courses at Harvard University. For the experimental interventions, students were randomly assigned to two groups receiving different kinds of instruction for two consecutive class meetings: active learning (experiment group) or completely passive lectures (control). (The rest of the courses were taught using a light version of active learning — traditional lectures with occasional interactive quizzes or conceptual questions — so both experimental and control group experienced a shift in instruction method during the interventions.) Both groups got identical paper handouts and identical example problems, to which the teachers provided identical solutions. The basic difference between the two groups, then, was whether the students got to work on the problems in small groups before the teacher presented the solutions (active, experiment), or whether the teacher presented the solutions immediately (passive, control).
At the end of the experimental interventions, all students answered both a multiple-choice test — to assess their learning — and a brief survey to assess their ”feeling of learning” (FOL). In the survey, the students were asked to rate their level of agreement with four statements: I enjoyed this lecture; I feel like I learned a great deal from this lecture; Instructor was effective at teaching; I wish all my physics courses were taught this way. When the results from both the learning test and the FOL survey had been analysed, the authors could conclude the following. The scores on the learning test were significantly higher for the students who were taught using activating methods. At the same time, this stronger-performing group consistently gave lower evaluations on the ”feeling of learning” statements. In short, the students who attended the passive lectures learned less, but rated their own learning, the teacher’s instructional skills and their general satisfaction with the lectures higher.
One would certainly like to know the reasons behind this anti-correlation between learning and perceived learning. The authors speculate, based on existing literature, that two kinds of effects could be at work here. Firstly, the tendency to interpret the cognitive fluency of the instructor as a measure of learning; a well prepared, well performed lecture can mislead students into thinking they learn more than they in fact are. And, in contrast: the mental struggle and regular exposure to ”not understanding”, which is naturally built into (and the entire idea of!) student-activating classes, might be interpreted as a sign of limited learning. (Indeed, in follow-up interviews, most students described the active lectures as disjointed and lacking in flow, as well as characterized by a general feeling of confusion, in comparison to ”the more enjoyable”, passive lecture.) Secondly, the less knowledge a student has, the less capable that student is to estimate his/her level of knowledge correctly. Since the control group scored lower on the learning test, this could also have a negative influence on their ability to judge their actual learning.
In summarizing their findings, the authors recommend teachers who plan to teach using active classrooms to put some effort into convincing students of the benefits of the chosen instruction method, since unnecessary negative attitudes could decrease students’ willingness to fully engage. (Why not show them this particular study!) For the sake of the experiment, they deliberately chose to avoid advertising any of the methods used, but other studies have shown that student attitudes in these areas certainly are possible to change.
Comment: In the paper abstract, the authors write: ”… attempts to evaluate instruction based on students’ perceptions of learning could inadvertently promote inferior (passive) pedagogical methods. For instance, a superstar lecturer could create such a positive feeling of learning that students would choose those lectures over active learning.” This is indeed an important point to make. Of course, we do want our students to enjoy and get inspired by their education — the goal is not to strive towards discontent. But perhaps one could support and promote pedagogical initiatives by expecting all teachers (yes, also those who stick to traditional lecturing) to (briefly) argue scientifically for their chosen method of instruction, as part of the regular routine for evaluating courses. This would put emphasis on the ability to make professional pedagogical decisions, and, hopefully, also make teachers less vulnerable to the pressure of simply being ”liked”, for reasons not necessarily connected to the ability to induce learning.
Text: Emma Wikberg, Fysikum
The study
