Modifying the Student's Resistance Towards Active Learning with More Active-learning

Abstract

The application of methodological innovations in the teaching of engineering has been promoted and justified for several years now, especially those based on active learning and problem-based learning. However, the adoption of these new methodologies by universities has been slower than expected. Although many of the indicated causes refer to resistance by professors (e.g. a lack of time for implementation), there are also those that are based on resistance by students. In particular, an attitude of distrust is mentioned with regard to these innovations, which normally require greater student participation. However, if the student has been part of passive learning during the majority of his life, how valid is his opinion about a methodology that he does not know?In order to analyze this, we performed a two-stage study on the perception about learning methodologies on university students in Universidad de los Andes, Chile. The first stage consisted in changing a course to the active learning methodology and surveying the course's students (N=56) at the beginning as well as the end of the course, asking them to describe their ideal class. The results showed that the attribute "participative", which is key in an active learning methodology, went from a selection of 41% before the course to 68% after the course was finished. The second stage corresponded to a general perception study of the engineering students at the same university, which was performed two years after starting to take 3 of the major's courses with methodological innovations based on active learning. The study included 581 students (62% of the total students at the School), who were asked to describe their ideal class. We compared the results of the opinions of freshmen (N=198) with upperclassmen that had taken courses with active learning (N=210) and those who had not (N=173). This study showed different cases where the description of the ideal class was the consequence of the previous courses that the student had taken, such as the example previously shown about how the attribute "participative" was chosen significantly more by upperclassmen than by freshmen, which coincides with the passive methodologies proper to the country's schools where they had studied. In this way, in this paper we show through diverse situations the influence that experienced methodologies can have on a student, and how through these same methodologies we can change these opinions and make them favorable towards methodologies based on active learning.

Assessing impacts of a learning-cycle-based module on students' conceptual sustainability knowledge using concept maps and surveys

“…When comparing student-and instructor-centered pedagogies in an electrical engineering class, Yadav et al (2011)found that learning gains were highest in problem based learning sessions, despite students' beliefs that traditional lectures were most effective. Promising however, Recabarren et al (2015) reported that student preference for pedagogies depended to some extent on the practices they had been exposed to in the past. Although students engaged primarily in instructor-centered courses tended to prefer these traditional teaching methods, student preference changed after experiencing student-centered courses (Recabarren et al, 2015).…”

“…Promising however, Recabarren et al (2015) reported that student preference for pedagogies depended to some extent on the practices they had been exposed to in the past. Although students engaged primarily in instructor-centered courses tended to prefer these traditional teaching methods, student preference changed after experiencing student-centered courses (Recabarren et al, 2015). Overall, although student-centered courses have been shown to enhance student learning, students' unfamiliarity with the innovative teaching practices may lead to resistance or distrust.…”

“…Perhaps then, student dissatisfaction with the sustainability module may be responsible for incongruent survey scores. Given that student resistance tonew and unfamiliar teaching practices has been reported (e.g., Recabarren et al, 2015;Yadav et al, 2011), one source of dissatisfaction may have been resistance to the active learning pedagogies used in the module. As most students were familiar with instructor-centered teaching practices in engineering education (Mills and Treagust, 2003;Wankat and Oreovicz, 2015), learning in a student-driven and collaborative environment may have been uncomfortable.…”

“…Additional limitations are noted for the assessment tools used to measure student sustainability knowledge. First, student-provided confidence scores are indirect measures of knowledge and may be over-reported (e.g., Yadav et al, 2011) or biased by student perceptions of the learning environment (e.g., Recabarren et al, 2015). To overcome the shortcomings of surveys, concept maps were used as additional, direct measure of student knowledge.…”

The Engineering Classroom is Still Relevant

“…The survey was utilized to understand what actions students take in order to be successful in their classes, regardless of the instructor or the instructor's teaching style. Several researchers have investigated student success related to learning style and preferential presentation from an instructor in conjunction with student learning styles 13,[16][17][18] . However, Wankat and Oreovicz found that, regardless of a student's learning style or intelligence, motivation fundamentally controls whether or not a student learns 19 .…”