Effective Use of Various Active Learning Techniques for the Course Automation and Control Engineering

Although effective teaching is focusing more on the need to use active learning techniques, the research literature regarding the efficacy of various teaching methods is inconclusive. An innovative active learning technique combining the features of role plays and simulations for an industrial psychology course is presented. Subjective reports and objective assessments of knowledge retention measured at two distinct times indicated the role play simulation is an effective teaching technique. The differential importance of active learning and passive learning (i.e., lectures) techniques for the college classroom was also examined. Finally, the application of this technique for several college courses is presented.

For decades, international studies instructors have adopted active learning techniques to engage students in a wide range of classes. The literature on active learning suggests many benefits of integrating these methods into courses as a complement to traditional teaching modes such as lectures. These benefits include motivating and engaging students, enhancing learning of content, and supporting skill building. Although the empirical literature on active learning is mixed, the general consensus from the literature is that active learning is a valuable supplement to other teaching methods. Students and faculty find active learning enjoyable and engaging. Human rights courses, specifically, can benefit from engaging students. Active learning can help students unpack their preconceived ideas about human rights, identify the challenges that face international efforts to cooperate, and better understand the world around them. At the same time, human rights courses often cover sensitive topics that can present challenges for instructors wanting to engage in active learning techniques. It is important to be mindful of how to approach these topics, regardless of teaching method and especially when using active learning techniques that give students more agency in the classroom. Focusing on best practices for active learning provides a useful guide to managing the challenges that using active learning poses in human rights courses. In particular, instructors should align activities with course learning objectives, give careful consideration to the selection of topics and questions, create a classroom environment that is conductive to respectful engagement, and use debriefing techniques at the conclusion of an activity. Active learning, when designed and implemented carefully, can help create a transformational learning experience for students in a human rights course.

In recent decades, educators have pushed to implementing active learning techniques that can advance students' competences. Universities are increasingly required to develop knowledge measured in terms of grades (hard skills) and inter-personal, social, and communication abilities (soft skills). Nevertheless, within the field of active learning, educators often focus on how these techniques can improve students' hard skills and their satisfaction. Few have analysed whether and how these techniques might improve students' soft skills. Moreover, among these few studies, the majority has analysed hard and soft skills separately, measuring whether different active learning techniques may or may not improve them. Virtually no one has studied whether students' hard and soft skills can converge or diverge in an active learning format. This study allows us to understand the relations between these two sets of variables, for example, whether an improvement (or deterioration) in the hard skills corresponds to an improvement (or deterioration) in the soft skills, and vice versa. In our experiment, we analyse the impact of a specific active learning format, such as the Flipped Classroom (FC), on both students' hard and soft skills, by comparing it with a traditional class integrated with other active learning techniques, such as presentations, debates, and teamwork activities. First, we use Pearson correlations to measure the relation between students' hard skills, understood in terms of grades, and a set of soft skills, such as critical thinking, self-efficacy, teamwork, and perception of learning. Second, we use canonical correlations to analyse whether hard and soft skills converge or diverge in an FC format, in comparison with a traditional teaching format integrated with the other active learning techniques. Our main finding is that the FC per se neither improves nor worsens students' performance in terms of hard and soft skills.

Educational literature contains extensive descriptions and analysis of active and collaborative learning techniques. For example, experiments in mathematics date back to at least the 1980s. Physicists have been particularly active in developing courses that promote active learning and integrate laboratory activities with lectures. In the mid 1990s, Hake collected data on 6542 students in 62 introductory physics courses to conclude that lecture-based courses yield only meager learning of physics concepts, while courses utilizing interactive engagement are substantially better in promoting student learning of concepts. Further, extensive studies have shown that active and collaborative learning techniques improve skill development, decrease failure rates, encourage success and interest among women and under-represented groups, and promote higher-order thinking skills.In computer science, much discussion at SIGCSE conferences and other forums has focused upon active and collaborative learning. For the most part, however, faculty have focused on small-scale activities within classes, such as small-group exercises, kinesthetic learning activities, hands-on activities, and student-faculty dialog. Further, while many courses contain a component involving active learning, these courses often continue with extensive use of lecture. In many cases, it seems that active and collaborative activities are not trusted to promote learning, so lectures continue.The pedagogy described in this paper utilizes a lab-based style emphasizing collaboration. In its pure form, developed and refined by the author in several courses since Fall 1992, students work in pairs within introductory-level computing courses to complete about 45 laboratory exercises in a course that meets for 56 sessions in a semester. In this format, the instructor lectures about 4 hours per month --- often in 5--15 minute segments. In an alternative format, students complete about 35 laboratory exercises, some of which extend over two class periods.In comparing this approach with a traditional format that utilizes lectures and separate lab sections, the lab-based approach covers more material, student performance on tests is improved, students are highly motivated and consistently prepared for class, students are engaged in the material, and retention rates are very high.

Active learning is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes higher-order thinking and encourages students to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate rather than to solely passively listen to lectures. This chapter categorizes, describes, and provides examples of various active learning techniques in a computing education research context. The techniques have varying types of student accountability and interdependence (solo, collaborative, or cooperative activities), instructor effort in terms of guidance, preparation, and feedback (before, during, or after the class session), and student engagement (active, constructive, or interactive), with different benefits and resource requirements. From commonly used techniques such as pair programming to those less frequently used in a computer science context such as jigsaw or fishbowl, this chapter provides computer science teachers with a toolbox of methods for actively engaging students in their learning process. This chapter describes active learning techniques commonly used in the computer science context and proposes how other active learning techniques could be adapted for this context. The materials in this chapter will empower preservice teachers to design lessons with these techniques in mind and to incorporate the techniques into current classroom practices.

The Proposed paper is related to use of active and collaborative learning techniques in the course digital communication of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering branch at Rajarambapu Institute of Technology, Rajaramnagar where large population of students is from rural areas. Although many researchers have confirmed that active and collaborative learning techniques are very useful in improving learning, motivating students, bringing critical thinking skills in the students, we need to develop special strategies for students with rural background. In this study, initially the learning styles of the students are obtained using Felder's learning style index survey. The active and collaborative learning techniques are implemented for this class and found that irrespective of the background of learners active and collaborative learning techniques are very beneficial to students for their learning. Only challenge is that instructor has to take some additional efforts.

NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract Session 2632 Active Learning in Large Lectures Russell D. Meier Kansas State University I. Introduction Active learning is powerful teaching. I have used active learning techniques in undergraduate computer engineering courses at Iowa State University and Kansas State University. I firmly believe that the learner-centered, active learning exercises have enhanced student knowledge of the material. I was challenged by two large lecture courses during the 1997-1998 academic year. Each course had a class size approaching 100 students. Many instructors believe that a large lecture is not an appropriate active learning environment. I strongly disagree. Properly designed exercises with appropriate individual-accountability measurements work very well in large lectures. In each course, the students formed cohesive learning teams. The teams enjoyed the active learning challenge problems and directed class discussion. My role evolved from a lecturer to the role of facilitator and mentor. Facilitating these learner-centered classrooms is the most rewarding experience I have had as a faculty member. However, managing large active learning classrooms is not for the weak-at-heart. Large lectures pose unique questions that must be faced when designing active learning environments. How will the large number of teams be selected? Is it possible to diversify teams in a large lecture when the student population is mostly homogenous? How can activities be completed in large lecture halls? What about the students that refuse to participate? Does active learning work for every student in the large course? Will the shear number of active learning teams foster competition, and is competition desired? What about incomplete teams caused by truancy? Is it possible to guarantee individual-accountability within the large student population? I had to find answers to all of these questions. This paper will discuss my experience designing and facilitating the active learning environments for the large lectures of my computer engineering courses. II. Background I began my teaching career in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. The computer engineering enrollment was increasing steadily while the computer engineering faculty size remained static. Thus, class size increased dramatically for the faculty members teaching core courses. I was the only instructor of one four credit-hour course on microprocessor systems design (CprE 301) from 1994 through 1998. My CprE 301 lectures met for 50 minutes three times per week and every student attended one three-hour laboratory during the week. The lecture grew from 40 students to nearly 100 students during these years. In 1997, I was also gifted with a second large lecture to be taught each semester; a three credit- hour course entitled "Fundamentals of Computer Engineering (CprE 310)." CprE 310 had always been extremely unpopular because it was perceived by students to be a mathematics

One of the challenges of teaching and learning process for biology and chemistry in high school is promoting student-centered active learning beside traditional instructor-focused, teaching-by-telling approach. Learning by laboratory activities attracts the students to be active to participate in the learning process. Active learning technique has also been successfully applied to teach biology and chemistry in multiple environments such as lecture theaters, classroom, laboratories, and online. Based on the challenges, we introduce active learning to high school teachers of biology and chemistry for improving laboratory management through workshops. This paper presents component of active learning which is formulated into a workshop for improving laboratory management. This presentation also encourages other science enthusiasts to organize the similar effort.

Active learning comprises techniques that engage students in the construction of understanding. Different techniques may work best for different learning objectives. We study students’ perceptions of some active learning techniques (including a Python simulation and a game) and traditional techniques (such as lecture). Students engage actively with them all, though more with those influential in course grades and with some active learning techniques. They particularly enjoy most active learning techniques. All techniques are rated as effective for each learning objective, but to varying extents. Traditional techniques like exams are rated highest for remembering concepts (associated with lower order cognitive skills). In contrast, some active learning techniques are rated highest for objectives related to higher order cognitive skills, including learning to conduct research, though lectures performed surprisingly well for these objectives. Other technique-objective matches are intuitive. Our results imply that a mix of techniques may be optimal in course design.

Object detection requires substantial labeling effort for learning robust models. Active learning can reduce this effort by intelligently selecting relevant examples to be annotated. However, selecting these examples properly without introducing a sampling bias with a negative impact on the generalization performance is not straightforward and most active learning techniques can not hold their promises on real-world benchmarks. In our evaluation paper, we focus on active learning techniques without a computational overhead besides inference, something we refer to as zero-cost active learning. In particular, we show that a key ingredient is not only the score on a bounding box level but also the technique used for aggregating the scores for ranking images. We outline our experimental setup and also discuss practical considerations when using active learning for object detection.KeywordsActive learningObject detectionEvaluation paper

The use of concept maps have been shown to be a more effective study method, however students report that they rarely adopt this practice and resort to highlighting and rereading their notes. It is possible that students are intimidated to attempt new, unfamiliar strategies and that with some training, they may be more likely to employ better methods. The purpose of this study was to assess if we could modify student study behaviours through modelling various active learning strategies throughout the year, including concept mapping.As part of this study, students in our first and second year undergraduate human physiology courses were invited to participate. These courses had mandatory tutorials each week where students worked in small groups that we had assigned. During the year, different types of active learning methods were introduced. Among these, two tutorials were designed to model the use of concept mapping. In the first semester, students were given a partially constructed concept map on skeletal muscle physiology to demonstrate how concept maps can be used to connect material they learned in class. In the second semester, the students were given a list of terms and concepts related to renal physiology and were asked to construct their own maps.In our first tutorial, we surveyed students to determine the learning strategies they currently employed using a modified strategies for learning questionnaire (pre‐MSLQ). Participants used a 7 point Likert scale to answer the 30 item survey, with a value of 1 indicating a strong disagreement to the statement and 7 reported for strongly agreeing. Again at the end of the year, students were asked to complete the same modified strategies for learning questionnaire (post‐MSLQ). We compared this to the pre‐MSLQ to determine if their methods used to approach studying course material had changed with regards to the learning activities, including concept mapping. Additionally, at the end of the year, students were asked to complete a learning attitudes survey, which evaluated the students’ perceptions of learning achieved with the use of these learning techniques modelled in their tutorial times.When comparing the pre and post‐MSLQ surveys, participants reported a score of 4.6 in the pre‐course survey, but an increased score of 5.4 in the post‐course survey (p<0.01, paired t‐test) to the statement “When I am studying a topic, I try to make everything fit together into a “big picture” (ie. charts, concept maps). In the learning attitudes survey, preliminary data from the statement “I feel I learned more when I used concept maps in the learning process than when I used my usual study techniques”, 60% of students reported that they agreed with this statement. Meanwhile, 70% of participants agreed with the statement, “I hope to employ concept maps in future learning activities”, suggesting that they found the activity beneficial.In follow up studies, we hope to determine the quality of created concept maps and analyze if this correlated to differences in participants performances on evaluations in the course. Since participants also reported an increase in the use of other active learning techniques, such as peer teaching, we also plan to explore whether these adopted techniques may contribute to any observed improvements in course evaluations.

It is shown in the literature that in the traditional lecture teaching mode, students are mostly passive and do not actively engage in the learning process. Not being engaged in the learning process, students are more likely to lose interest in the material and less likely to comprehend material at a deep level. Consequently, students in traditional lecturing are more prone to simply target meeting the minimum requirements to pass a course. In contrast, active-learning pedagogies have been designed such that students are given the opportunity to engage in the learning process as active participants in the classroom. This promotes better comprehension of the concepts involved. At Wayne State University, statistics on students’ performance indicate that many students entering the Engineering Technology programs either drop or fail to pass courses with a C or better, with success rates being as low as 59% for some courses. To address this issue, the authors have adopted evidence-based active learning techniques in selected courses in the Mechanical Engineering Technology program. The Statics, Dynamics, and Applied Thermodynamics courses were targeted for this initial effort. Statics is a gateway course foundational to the rest of the program, Dynamics is taken right after Statics, and Thermodynamics is one of the most challenging senior level courses. These courses will serve as avenues for measuring the effectiveness (or otherwise) of using active learning techniques in engineering technology education. More specifically, the authors have adopted the following evidence-based techniques: in-class experiments, just-in-time teaching, team quizzes, and students as teachers. This paper describes the specific class activities that were undertaken when implementing the different techniques. The effectiveness of these techniques was measured using students’ persistence in the target courses and the final grades. In addition, standardized concept inventory tests were administered at the beginning and the end of the semester as another measure of the effectiveness of this implementation. Preliminary findings from this study indicate that this project has successfully fostered students’ interest, persistence, and performance.

With higher education shifting its emphasis from teaching to learning and inputs to outcomes, active learning techniques are gaining prominence. Research has shown that students learn better when they actively engage the course content, rather than passively absorb lecture material. However, many faculty are unsure of how to take advantage of these new techniques to improve the learning outcomes for their students. For one active learning technique, problem-based learning, librarians are well positioned to facilitate its adoption into course curriculum. In order to effect a high-quality problem-based learning experience, a true collaboration of efforts needs to take place between the subject faculty and librarian. In such a synergistic system, information skills are integrated directly into course content, while an engaging active learning experience for students is facilitated. This article describes the background and history of problem-based learning, explaining why information skills are an integral part of the technique. The authors then detail the experiences of librarians at Purdue University, both in forming collaborations with subject faculty, and in the development of problem-based learning instructional modules.

In recent years, scholars and educators of the English language have shown a lot of interest in the active learning approach. Although a few studies have been conducted on teachers' perceptions and practices of active learning in classrooms, few studies have been conducted in Vietnamese contexts on teachers' perceptions and practices of the function of active learning in reading classrooms. Due to that gap, the current study was conducted to investigate teachers' perceptions regarding active learning techniques used in reading classrooms and the role active learning plays in reading instructions. The paper conducted a descriptive study in order to identify the active learning approaches employed by EFL teachers in reading classrooms at private language centers and investigates their perspectives on the role of active learning in reading instruction. The questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from two sources. The participants were twenty-six teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) from the province of Vinh Long. The result reveals that the participants had a favorable view of the role of active learning. In particular, they felt that active learning allows students to improve their critical thinking and reading comprehension, as well as teamwork, interpersonal skills, and problem-solving abilities. These findings have a number of educational implications.

Background:Medical education is moving toward active learning during large group lecture sessions.This study investigated the saturation and breadth of active learning techniquesimplemented in first year medical school large group sessions.Methods:Data collection involved retrospective curriculum review and semistructured interviewswith 20 faculty. The authors piloted a taxonomy of active learning techniques and mappedlearning techniques to attributes of learning-centered instruction.Results:Faculty implemented 25 different active learning techniques over the course of 9 firstyear courses. Of 646 hours of large group instruction, 476 (74%) involved at least 1active learning component.Conclusions:The frequency and variety of active learning components integrated throughout the year1 curriculum reflect faculty familiarity with active learning methods and their supportof an active learning culture. This project has sparked reflection on teaching practicesand facilitated an evolution from teacher-centered to learning-centered instruction.