The beginning of a new semester is always an exciting time. Instructors are excited about new learning experiences they want to try. Students are excited about moving one step closer to graduating but many of them are anxious about what the semester will bring. I like to start the first class by sharing the journey ahead with my students. It puts them at ease, excites them about the possibilities, and motivates them to learn. It also takes care of the number one expectation of current students, "How is this going to be relevant to my life?" Another topic I spend some time on is the typical misconceptions new students have about college. Dr. Stephen Chew has a classic article about this very topic. He notes there are four things that students typically are misinformed about. He writes, "Students think that learning can happen a lot faster than it does. Take, for example, the way many students handle assigned readings. They think they can get what they need out of a chapter with one quick read through (electronic devices at the ready, snacks in hand, and ears flooded with music). Or, they don’t think it’s a problem to wait until the night before the exam and do all the assigned readings at once. 'Students must learn that there are no shortcuts to reading comprehension.' Teachers need to design activities that regularly require students to interact with course text materials." You can read the rest of his short and concise article here.

If an instructor delivers a lecture and no one learns anything, did teaching really take place? Is this one of your recurring nightmares? I know I spend a lot of time assessing the effectiveness of my teaching and this question really resonates with me. I just finished a good article by Alla Kushniryk and Kenneth J. Levine about multitasking (or switch-tasking as some of the literature describes it). It validates what others have discovered as well; basically that it is very difficult for anyone to listen well and write good notes that will allow them to learn. They write, "It was found that multitasking significantly decreased performances on both the listening and writing tasks. The experiment also uncovered that the degree of social presence did not affect students’ performances on the listening or writing tasks in the learning environment. The perceived degree of social presence was the same in the virtual- and live-presenter groups." The social presence portion of their findings is crucial information for our eLearning colleagues. Teaching in an online or hybrid environment presents its own challenges but this research notes that learning can be done well even when the mode of delivery isn't in the traditional face-to-face version. The scientists did add, "In the virtual-presenter condition, the participants of the study might consider the listening task as being secondary and the writing task as being the most important." Understanding how learners perform in different settings is crucial if we are to deepen our understanding of effective teaching. This study certainly helps but more should be done to discover what works best in 21st century learning environments.

While we often talk about moving from lectures to more active learning methods, we sometimes forget an important component. Student feedback can be very useful when we are transitioning. That is why Dr. Grant Wiggins post about engaging lessons caught my attention. His results are from high schoolers but so many of the comments could be put to good use in our college classrooms as well. One student wrote, "I thought that making your own nation in politics was extremely interesting and fun. It was interesting because it gave us students the ability to design our perfect environment." How many different discussions can you see coming from this type of learning experience based on that response? In a time when students are becoming hyper-interested in the political system, assigning this type of learning experience could really allow students to develop critical thinking skills. Another student wrote, "For our AP French class we had to construct a resume and cover letter for a foreign French related career opportunity that we found. This is interesting as we learned a highly useful life skill that should’ve been taught in another class but also because we got to explore opportunities around the world." This illustrates the very critical need to make lessons as relevant as possible. It is one of the most repeated complaints that many students share about their classroom experience. How many times have you heard the question, "Why do we have to know this?" Luckily, active learning lends itself to these types of lessons. So as you begin thinking about increasing the amount of active learning you have in your classes, take a look at your student rating comments and use them to help shape your teaching.