Revolutionizing Teaching

A Nobel Laureate's Education Plea: Revolutionize Teaching (+Podcast)

Eric Westervelt | April 14, 2016

Bloodletting to keep the "humors" in balance was a leading medical treatment from ancient Greece to the late 19th century. That's hard to believe now, in the age of robot-assisted surgery, but "doctors" trusted lancets and leeches for centuries.
To Nobel laureate Carl Wieman, the college lecture is the educational equivalent of bloodletting, one long overdue for revision.
"It's a very good analogy," the Stanford professor says. "You let some blood out and go away and they get well. Was it bloodletting that did it, or something else?"

"CWRU active learning initiative featured by EDUCAUSE Review..." Source: http://www.case.edu/its/news/cwru-active-learning-initiative-featured-by-educause-review.html

<more at http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/14/465729968/a-nobel-laureates-education-plea-revolutionize-teaching; related articles and links: http://www.case.edu/its/news/cwru-active-learning-initiative-featured-by-educause-review.html (CWRU active learning initiative featured by EDUCAUSE Review. 2016) and http://www.pnas.org/content/111/23/8410.abstract (Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Scott Freeman, Sarah L. Eddy, Miles McDonough, Michelle K. Smith, Nnadozie Okoroafor, Hannah Jordt, and Mary Pat Wenderoth. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 111 no. 23, 8410–8415, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1319030111. [Abstract: To test the hypothesis that lecturing maximizes learning and course performance, we metaanalyzed 225 studies that reported data on examination scores or failure rates when comparing student performance in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses under traditional lecturing versus active learning. The effect sizes indicate that on average, student performance on examinations and concept inventories increased by 0.47 SDs under active learning (n = 158 studies), and that the odds ratio for failing was 1.95 under traditional lecturing (n = 67 studies). These results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sections, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning. Heterogeneity analyses indicated that both results hold across the STEM disciplines, that active learning increases scores on concept inventories more than on course examinations, and that active learning appears effective across all class sizes—although the greatest effects are in small (n ≤ 50) classes. Trim and fill analyses and fail-safe n calculations suggest that the results are not due to publication bias. The results also appear robust to variation in the methodological rigor of the included studies, based on the quality of controls over student quality and instructor identity. This is the largest and most comprehensive metaanalysis of undergraduate STEM education published to date. The results raise questions about the continued use of traditional lecturing as a control in research studies, and support active learning as the preferred, empirically validated teaching practice in regular classrooms.])>