On using crowdsourcing and active learning to improve classification performance

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Outcome in the traditional setting of chalkboard teaching, students tends to remain in the passive mode and do not actively participate in the teaching and learning process. As a result of this, they may lose interest in the course content and conceptual understanding declines. It directly impacts their performance in the examination. With the use of active learning strategies, the subject teacher plays the role of facilitator and creates a conducive environment for students to actively participate in the teaching learning process. This paper discusses effective use of various active learning techniques implemented for the course of ‘Automation and Control Engineering’ for Third year undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Program at CCEW. Techniques such as expert lecture, open ended assignments, YouTube video for animation were employed for content delivery in theory as well as laboratory sessions. Performance evaluation was carried out by using techniques such as google quizzes and group activity on hydraulic and pneumatic trainer kit. Students' perceptions about the implementation of these active learning techniques are studied and analyzed which are reported in this paper. It is observed that as the results of this implementation students' overall understanding of the course content is enhanced. Keywords— Active Learning; Demo Based Exam; Open Ended Assignment; Oral Exam; Quizzes.

The Java Wiki Integrated Development Environment (JavaWIDE) is an innovative environment that promotes active learning and collaboration in programming courses. This paper surveys how JavaWIDE's features have been used to promote active and collaborative learning in both traditional and distance education (synchronous) in four different environments: high school, summer enrichment courses, and at two- and four-year colleges. The authors describe the context of each teaching and learning environment and the parts of JavaWIDE that are particularly well suited in each context. After discussing the active learning and collaboration techniques employed, student responses to the experience are summarized. This collection of case studies illustrates how the concurrent editing, shared environment awareness and other features of JavaWIDE can be used to promote active learning and collaboration within a heterogeneous set of teaching and learning environments.

Seminars and workshops on active learning techniques are being held at many universities. This essay compares traditional classroom interaction with the new active learning approach and offers a personal account of one instructor's attempts to introduce the active learning method within a criminology curriculum. Small group interaction, weekly written assignments, and student's editing of papers are discussed. Overall the instructor found that students responded positively to the new approaches and that their examination and paper grades improved.

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.

Designing active learning (AL) techniques to determine informative training samples for hyperspectral image (HSI) classification is an open research issue. In this chapter, several spectral–spatial AL techniques are designed by exploiting both, an interesting approach to fuse spectral and spatial information and different combinations of existing uncertainty and diversity criteria. In order to fuse spectral and spatial information, the dimensionality of HSI is reduced and mean filtering (for incorporation of spatial information) is applied to each component image in the reduced domain of HSI considering multiple windows of different sizes. The filtered images are concatenated with original component images to form an extended spatial profile for the HSI. These spectral–spatial features are used with different combinations of uncertainty and diversity criteria to design several spectral–spatial AL techniques for determining most informative pixels. The experiments carried out on two real HSI data sets show that the spectral–spatial AL methods are more robust than the AL methods based on spectral measurements only.

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.

BackgroundWith the increased attention on the need to retain students within STEM majors, it is important for STEM instructors to adopt evidence-based instructional practices that are student-centric and employ active learning techniques. However, traditional approaches for increasing student-centric, active learning practices such as workshops, seminars, and department or college mandates have been either inefficient or ineffective at motivating institutional change. This is particularly true for introductory STEM courses with large enrollments. One promising approach is to develop and support instructors in forming communities of practice around reforming introductory and foundational STEM courses. By engaging instructors within these communities of practice, and connecting the communities with each other, instructors may be more likely to experience an epistemological shift that will lead to adoption of active learning practices.To explore whether participating in a community of practice is related to the use of student-centered, active learning techniques, 25 undergraduate foundational STEM courses whose instructors were members of a community of practice were observed using the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM Courses. The results were compared to a sample of 35 undergraduate foundational STEM courses whose instructors were not members of a community of practice.ResultsInstructors who were members of a community of practice were much more likely to employ student-centric practices, such as asking questions, following up, and engaging in discussion, and much less likely to use instructor-centered practices, such as lecturing. In addition, students in these classes were more likely to be actively engaged in problem-solving activities rather than passively listening. We found that student-centric, active learning practices correlated with students attending and actively participating in class, an effect that is stronger for courses taught by instructors who were members of a community of practice.ConclusionCommunities of practice are a potentially effective mechanism for enhancing student learning and retention by increasing the use of active learning practices by STEM instructors. These communities are particularly effective when they consist of small, disciplinary teams working on the same course(s) and are linked with other individuals or groups that use evidence-based instructional practices.