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The Transform your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio. Join Dr. Rob McDole and Dr. Jared Pyles as they seek to inspire higher education faculty to adopt innovative teaching and learning practices.
Students want to have a voice. They want to be heard. And to the extent that we're able to do this as instructor and engage them in the learning process, that is really what is powerful for not just for students, for human beings.
Narrator:This is the Transform Your Teaching podcast. The Transform Your Teaching podcast is a service of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Cedarville University in Cedarville, Ohio.
Jared:Welcome back to the Transform Your Teaching podcast. My name is Jared Pyles, and with me is Dr. Rob McDole. Hello, Rob.
Rob:Hello.
Jared:We are continuing our series on active learning and active learning spaces.
Jared:We've been talking to some experts in the field of active learning, and we are honored to have as our guest today the executive director for the Center for Teaching and Learning at Purdue. Yes. Home of the Boilermakers, Dr. Chantal Leveque Bristol. Hello, Dr. Leveque Bristol.
Rob:Welcome.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Hello. How are you? Thank you so much.
Jared:Thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.
Rob:So what's your background? How did you get into higher education? How did you become the executive director?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Yeah. So I I kinda like to say that I sort of fell into it when I was younger. I really did not expect to become the director of the center or to be in teaching and learning in that way. I was following a very, you know, trajectory that I was a on the on the tenure track. I was a faculty member at at that time, Missouri State University and, was really interested in in teaching and motivation, but was was working with the center there and, got really interested in what they were doing.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So I was kind of a faculty fellow in their teaching and learning center and through sort of like the work there and the director at the time leaving, I just kind of fell into it and dabbled into it and applied for the position and got it, but continued to to be on the tenure track so and became a full professor and kinda never left it. So there's no, you know, there's no, one trajectory to become, an executive director or to just work in teaching and learning. There is no traditional career path for that. So we're we're gonna come from, a lot of different fields and expertise. My, area is social psychology.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:That's what I have my PhD in, and I'm still a a full professor here of educational psychology at Purdue University. So it's the that was that was my trajectory. Never thought I would be executive director of the center at Purdue for sure.
Rob:We've talked about active learning, and that's what this particular podcast is looking at right now. What is it? What is active learning? How do you define it?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So that's a really interesting question, and I'm I think I've heard I I kinda can guess what Tracy, doctor Birdwell would have said. But, you know, active learning can can look very different. And and, you'll have a lot of articles out there that will talk about active learning as sort of like being active or or or doing things. And and to me, that's not how I define it. Active learning is not necessarily about doing things and being like it your classroom does not have to be loud.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? It's not like people are gonna necessarily talk to talk loudly in the class. Active learning is about engagement and and motivation to me, really about students being engaged in the process, asking themselves some questions, or the instructor is asking them some questions that are meaningful and really make sense in in what they're doing, like real problem, meaningful problems to solve. And the students are really integrating, working with the information, playing with the ideas, but that can be done in small groups and small pair. It can even be done individually.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? If the the questions are really applied and applicable to their life and ask the students to really solve real problems. So again, it's about engagement. And the way that I've defined this in my work is through a theory of self determination. So a motivational theory.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:I told you that my area is motivation and social psychology. So this is really important in all the work that I'm doing. And in self determination theory, we talk about the autonomy supportiveness of the learning climate as perceived by students, and also the satisfaction of three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. So this is really how I've defined active learning in my work.
Jared:That's an interesting perspective because, you know, you don't necessarily come from the educational background of someone who's been teaching in the classroom. How does that weigh against those that would come to you who are from the educational background and have a different definition of active learning?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:You know, often when I work with others and, you know, faculty member and people in education thinking about active learning and really thinking about, you know, kind of what is being done as opposed to how it's perceived. So I really try to focus on the why. That's sort of the conversation that I have, with other educators. Right? So if we're talking about active learning and they say, well, we can talk about, you know, building space also.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:But if they say, need to have a room with round tables and I want to engage people in groups and I want them to be able to work on group projects, and and I say, well, that's great. That's one way to do it. Then tell me how are the students really sort of thinking about their own learning and engaging with that learning. Right? Is it what kind of projects are they working on?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Because you could engage students in group work, and it's gonna look like and sound like active learning, but the outcomes may not necessarily follow. Right? There might not be deeper learning. There might not be integration. There might not be reflection.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And those are the kinds of concept that I really focus on. So that's kinda how I engage others into the conversation. Right? And often, maybe if they're coming from a more traditional view with background in education, they may be thinking more about the what is being done and not reading necessarily the why. So bringing those two ideas together, really helps you find that sweet spot of how can you design classroom?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:How can you design space? How can you design learning experiences that will help student understand the why they're doing it, right, not just what they're doing, but rethinking about different levels of motivation. Right? So going from a space in which the students are reading much more like, I'm doing this because I'm checking a box or because this is what I was asked to do. This is what's required to do to relate to something where they feel like they're endorsing it.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:It's a choice. Like, they feel like this is internalized. Right? And when we get to that point, that's really where active learning and deep learning occurs.
Rob:So you were talking about motivation as one of the principles I'm I'm assuming because self determination theory. Mhmm. And if you wanna repeat those three principles again that are underlying that, that would be great for our listeners, I think. As well as how do you approach a classroom or students who, when you walk in, you're going to bring this active learning through these principles that you're talking about, and they don't want it. They want to pay their fee, take the test, get their b, and walk out the door.
Rob:How do you handle those students?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So the the self determination theory principles are autonomy, competence, and and relatedness. And competence, I'll just give you, like, a little definition of each. You know, competence is pretty self explanatory. Right? It's sort of mastery of skills, and we tend to focus a lot on this in higher education, almost to the, at the expense of the other two.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Autonomy is not, independence, but it's about choice and and and the and freedom. So it's sort of empowerment to be able to choose. Right? So the students are on their own path and trajectory. Instructors come alongside them to help them that.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And then relatedness is that we are in relation with others. So it's this belongingness, the feeling of, you know, being with other students. So when you're asking about students that are not motivated, right? They're coming in, they just want to get to class, do what's necessary, get therapy and move on. Right?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:At in that space, and I'll say I'll back up a second, and I'll say that the theory would say that every human is motivated to become more more self determined. It's it's sort of a these basic psychological needs are innate, and they're true across all human beings. So it's it's natural in an environment that is autonomy supportive for students to want to feel autonomous, competent, and related. So when it's not happening, right, and they're at lower level of the motivation framework where they're thinking, just I just I I don't know why I'm here or I'm doing it just because I'm going to get the b and pass the test and that's all I need. The job of the instructor, our role is to create an environment that's more compelling.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? And we start often with rationale. Why is it that you that we're you're taking this class? Why is it that I'm teaching this class? Right?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And and really ask the student also where they're coming from, ask about their level of motivation, which we do with different tools, but engage the conversation with them as to, you know, why why is it that they're not feeling motivated? And often it's because they don't see the value or the importance of that particular class or that particular topic. And when I work with instructors, I really encourage them to talk to the student about why is it that this field is important? Why is it that this course is important? Why did they pick this as a career?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? Help them think like like a psychologist, like a chemist, like a physicist. How does it apply to their daily life? How is that relevant to them? And that comes into the piece about relatedness.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And when you're able to structure a learning environment with those things in mind, really giving the rationale to students, building bridges, helping them understand why you're doing what you're doing, even if it's something that's very boring and required it as part of the class. Once they start seeing the value of what they're doing, they're much more likely to become motivated and self determined because they'll, they'll feel the value. And I don't know that's kind of a long answer to your question, but, and that's when I think active learning comes in where there's different things that you can do and even different activities that you can engage students in that are more likely to foster that.
Jared:Yeah, that's good because I think the relatedness piece is a good part of that because the instructor loves their content. Right? Otherwise they wouldn't be teaching it. They wouldn't be in the field.
Rob:The instructor feels foreign to the student in some way?
Jared:I think it's more of like the instructor goes into the course excited about delivering the content. And sometimes, or most of time, it's very discouraging when the students are like, yeah, we don't care. But if you make that, make it a sort of relatedness and make that personal connection with what the student knows and what they go through. Like you said, think like a chemist, think like a biologist, think like an artist. And how does this, especially if it's like a gen ed course, how does this fit with your major or your what you wanna do later on?
Jared:Why you should care. Yeah. I think that's interesting.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And, again, it's you know, going back to the why. Right? Not just the what or the how, but the why. And that's why that provision of a rationale is is really important. You talk about those gen ed courses.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And sometimes instructors who are teaching the gen eds don't really wanna teach those gen eds either, you know, because it's not it's not necessarily their their their content. Right? There's it's a it's a large service course, and there might be a lot of different, you know, things to cover. And it's also having that conversation with the faculty. Right?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:When you were taking those gen eds, what would have made you engage in those those things more? Right? Do you understand now why that course was as part of the curriculum? Right? So I connect it with their own experience.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And that's really what's meaningful for students because, you know, it's not it's not true to think that students are are lazy and not motivated by default. Like, if you think about all of the the social media that people are engaged in, not just students. Right? Students want to have a voice. They want to be heard.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And to the extent that we're able to do this as instructor and engage them in the learning process, Right? They're coming alongside in their own journey, and the instructor is there to shape and sort of do you know, guide. That is really what is powerful for not just for students, for human beings. Right? So this is what's nice about that that this theory is that it's a theory of human motivation.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:It works for all. Right, if I ask you what what makes a satisfying day for you in your work, right, you can connect it to those three principle. Right? You fit you felt choiceful. You had autonomy.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:You were agentic. You you felt competent. Right? At the end of the day, you're like, yep. I did a good job here.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:This this was good. And you felt connected to other people working with you, to what you're saying, to the content. Right? And and when those three principles are met, you feel a lot more engaged. You know, that's what active learning is.
Jared:All right. So let's transition because the original idea for doing active learning was, for me, was hearing about Purdue's Wilmeth Active Learning Center at Purdue. I saw a presentation about it back in 2018, 2019, and I was floored with just the impetus behind it and the vision that you guys had, stuff like that, would you give us a little bit of an overview of that active learning center and the walk at Purdue?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:This was around the time that I was hired back in, you know, 2012 where the conversation started. And when I was hired into at Purdue to direct the center, it was a lot of conversation about, you know, active learning and and doing more of it. And at Purdue, we had two sort of test space, experimental space. They were in the basement of the library. So library has been a very important partner for us in active learning and one of our program called Impact.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:In these active learning space, these two active learning space were very popular, right? In high demand, full all the time, and you could this is where we started our impact program. And when, president Mitch Daniels started at Purdue, he visited those two spaces and he was very much aware and, just really plugged into the conversation about active learning. And he said, I want more of that. I wanna build something on a much larger scale, something that's gonna be, you know, cutting edge.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:And that was his vision and sort of the deciding factor for the active learning center. So I was in a lot of conversation with him at the time in terms of the the effect of active learning, how we were approaching it from a motivational perspective, the engagement, the research that we could do around it, and we've done a lot of research around, active learning. And and then that's how really the the Wilmith Active Learning Center got envisioned and emerged and, you know, was was full immediately when we opened it. And we have thousands and thousands of students who are going through these doors every day. And the idea is that, right, it's a mix.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:The division, which was really cutting edge at the time and now is being replicated, is that the in classroom spaces and the outside of the classroom spaces would be coexisting together in the same buildings. There's a lot of places for students and instructor to continue to learn and discuss outside of the classroom space. Right? So everything is very bright and open, and there's a lot of opportunity to engage outside of the classroom. It's hard to find a seat in the active learning center, in the Wilmette Active Learning Center when class are in in session.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? You'll see students eating. There's a little cafe. You'll see students sleeping, which is hugely important in active learning. Right?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:You need time to to rest. And you'll see them reading, sleeping, talking to other students, on small group projects. And so there's there's learning going on, you know, all the time, you know, inside and outside the classroom.
Rob:How would you characterize the principles in terms of you spoke to some of it a little bit, I think, just in bringing it to us in your explanation of how it came to be. Can you speak directly to some of the design principles behind the can I just say walk?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:New walk. Yeah. Walk. Yeah. Actually, absolutely.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So there are some large, there's three large classroom spaces in the, walk. One of them is what you would consider the large lecture, but even this large lecture is done in a way the design of it is done so that students in the back row are feeling still very relatively close to the instructor. And it's also easy for the instructor to go from the front of the room to the back of the room. Right? So you don't have a very steep staircase to go from the bottom to the top, which for some instructors, it's like impossible.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Like, you know, if you have fear of height or just physical, you know, limitations, it's very difficult to to work, you know, in that classroom. So that's sort of the underlying principle is that it's it's it feels small. And we have other sort of tiered level classroom, which are, you know, similar. So you can have a 160 students sitting in a class like this, but it feels very small. It's tiered.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:You can easily walk through in between the desk and then the students are in small groups, but also in the large classroom. And flexibility, I think, is another principle, another design principle that was used when designing the walk is that a lot of the furniture is movable. You can reconfigure it depending on what you're going to do in your classroom. And some of them the technology is the other factor. Some of these classroom has a lot of technology in them.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:We're talking about monitors at each table and monitors on the wall for each tables. Right? So that if you're thinking about a class in physics, you could be working on a small group project and project your project on one of the screen. The instructor can control this from the front of the room. Right?
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So it's very high-tech. But for a lot of instructors, that kinda gets in the way. And then we have other classrooms that are very, very, you know, low tech where the technology is movable whiteboards, which is also very interesting and can really foster engagement in active learning. Right? So there's choice.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Again, in building this space, there's flexibility that the principle of choice is is present so faculty can select a classroom that really meets their teaching needs better. So so I don't know if it starts to answer some of your question. Right? But that that's important because if you're thinking about the professional development, and this is really what I do as as a as director of the center, is that if there's too much technology and an instructor is not comfortable with that technology, that's going to be a hurdle. Mhmm.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Right? It's not it's gonna get in the way of actually connecting. You're talking about people's student first. Right? People first.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:That is so important. And I loved what you said about this. But if you cannot make that connection, if you cannot relate to the students because you're so concerned about the technology, it's going to get in the way versus someone who's very comfortable with the technology and then can bring in the technology to bring in different perspectives, right, videos to react to, or even, you know, letting students who work on these projects that are very high-tech and then projecting their work. If you're not comfortable with this, it's going to get in the way. And then you can do it more easily, for certain instructors with low tech, solutions.
Jared:So we like to ask our guests to give our listeners homework when it comes to the topic we're talking about. And since we're exploring active learning, to you, what would be a good first step? Imagine a faculty member comes into the CTO and says, I want to talk to the executive director. And then you say, okay, here's your first step for active learning, it's this.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So I like to give this first step as, again, focusing on people, very simple step. I would say talk to your students. Start with your experience of what active learning and engagement would be. Could be through a survey. It could be just a poll in the classroom.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:It could just be let's have a discussion. Let's put your ideas in the discussion board. But really let the student's voice come through. Ask your student, when are you engaged? Tell me about times where when you're engaged.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Tell me about classrooms or instructors that have done things that you felt really creative and engaging, and then learn from that. Right? It doesn't have to be learning from an expert, which in in case and I would say in this case, the students are really the expert, right? They're gonna tell you. I did write about it.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:So I do have a book that was published a couple of years ago talking about these principles and what we've been discussing and also the Wilmette Active Learning Center as part of that endeavor in our impact program, which stands for Instruction Matters, Purdue Academic Course Transformation. So that's available through, Rootledge if people are interested to, read more about what I've talked about.
Rob:Educational gold.
Jared:Doctor Chantal Leveque, Bristol from Purdue University, thank you so much for joining us today. You've you've challenged us, and you've once again, I the series just I leave these episodes with more questions
Rob:Yes.
Jared:Which I guess is the purpose of it. I don't know. But we we we appreciate your time today for sure.
Rob:Thank you.
Chantal Leveque Bristol:Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to, to be here and discuss this with you.
Jared:That's gonna do it for us on the Transform Your Teaching podcast for this episode. Be sure to like and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any questions, send us an email at CTLpodcast@Cedarville.edu. Subscribe to our newsletter. The information's available to subscribe to that in our show notes and description, and be sure to check out our blog at cedarville.edu/focusblog.
Jared:Thanks for listening.