Des conseils de carrière
Career advice
Goodbye, podium
Lessons on teaching in an
active learning classroom
by Christopher Buddle
his past year was the first time I had a
classroom designed for “active learning.”
My course had just over 80 students and
was an introductory ecology class. The
course has a strong focus on quantitative
approaches to population and community ecology, from equations to modelling. I gave up doing
traditional PowerPoint slides for this class a long
time ago, but until this past term I was still teaching in a theatre-style lecture hall. While continuing
to push the active learning agenda, it was great
to have an opportunity to teach in a classroom
specifically designed for such a purpose. Here
are some thoughts about teaching in an active
learning classroom now that the term is over.
Pros
1. The configuration of the room made it feel
like a “small” class even though there were more
than 80 students in the room. From what I understand, a lot of attention was given to the acoustics
in the room. I was truly amazed that, even with
active group work, the noise level was not overwhelming and groups could work effectively.
2. A key strength of the active leaning classroom
is the configuration of tables. Because the tables
were organized so that students were facing each
other, the space was optimal for active discussions. Quick problem-solving challenges, or getting students to come up with real-world examples related to course content was done easily on
the spot. In a large lecture theatre it’s clunky and
difficult to form discussion groups.
3. I used some, but not all, of the technology in
the room. The tablet was fantastic (but see also
below) and allowed me to write and draw, and
those notes would be projected on one of the
screens. At the end of lecture, the slides were
immediately posted as PDFs on the course website. The room had dual projectors and I used the
second screen with a document camera so I could
project graphs or text from the course textbook.
Students therefore had the course content from
the textbook and from my lecture notes on the
screens during the lecture.
4. Another advantage of the room was that the
walls next to all the student tables were whiteboards. This allowed the groups to work on problems using markers on the whiteboard to draw out
answers to problems, or do things like create
ideas about food webs. Again, the configuration
of the room made this very quick and easy, since
the students were just a few feet away from their
whiteboard.
Cons
1. Sometimes you just need to lecture, and an
active learning classroom isn’t set up very well
for more traditional lectures. Active teaching and
learning can be exhausting for the teacher and
the students, and sometimes the content really
lends itself well to a more traditional lecture.
2. When I sat at one of the desks during the guest
lectures, I discovered that you don’t know where
to look. There are dual screens in four different
Tcorners of the classroom, and the teacher is tanding in the middle of the room, not in front of any of the screens. It can be a bit unsettling. 3. Although I listed the whiteboards as a “pro”
above, they also get labelled a “con” because of
their configuration. Since there were only seven
tables and one main whiteboard for each table,
it could get crowded when students at each table
worked together on the whiteboard.
4. When technology works, it’s wonderful. When
you rely on this technology and it fails, it can
spell disaster. Towards the end of the term, the
tablet pen stopped working in the middle of a
class (of course!). This meant I had to quickly
change strategies, using a sheet of paper under
the document camera and writing the class notes
in that fashion. It was less than ideal, and was
frustrating for me and for the students.
If you want to dabble in active learning in your
own class (or other approaches, such as flipped
classrooms), I do highly recommend trying to
teach in a classroom space that is conducive to
your style of teaching. That being said, it’s a very
bad idea to teach a traditional podium-style,
lecture-based class in an active learning space –
it just doesn’t work. Under that scenario, stick to
a theatre-style classroom.
This article was originally published in a longer format
on Christopher Buddle’s blog, Arthropod Ecology.
Dr. Buddle, an assistant
professor of natural resource
sciences at McGill University,
was recently appointed the
university’s dean of students.
“ A key strength is the con-
figuration of tables: the
learning space is optimal
for active discussions.”
Cet article est également
disponible en français
sur notre site web,
www.affairesuniversitaires.ca
