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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.
I don't believe in passive learning. I don't think that exists. I think lecture matters. It depends on who the learner is, what they know. And I think there's relationship between lecture and active learning too.
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 here on the campus of Cedarville University. My name is Jared Pyles. With me is Dr. Rob McDole. Hello, Rob.
Rob:Good afternoon.
Jared:We are continuing our series on active learning. In our last episode, we talked about all the confusion that we have with active learning
Rob:Which was a lot.
Jared:And how we don't really have a good definition for it. We're hoping that our guest today will provide, make us a little less nebulous, because we're out in the cloud right now trying to figure out what exactly active learning is, because we want a firm definition. So our guest today is from Purdue University. Her name is Tracy Birdwell, and she serves as the assistant director of Purdue's Center for Instructional Excellence. Hello, Dr. Birdwell.
Tracey Birdwell:Hello. Thank you for inviting me today.
Jared:Thank you for coming on. We appreciate it.
Rob:Yeah. We're glad you're here. So give us a little bit of your background. How did you get into higher Ed? How did you get into this particular role?
Tracey Birdwell:Sure. I kinda had a higher ed journey. My original box, my Ph.D. is in American history. So in terms of teaching and learning, my early years are spent, you know, in the classroom teaching, often teaching in classrooms that didn't fit my teaching needs. So I would have to, like, do what I could to transform the space, constantly thinking about how I'm changing my activities to fit whatever the room would allow me to do.
Tracey Birdwell:I consider myself a teaching nerd. I love to teach, but I also, I could just talk about teaching all day, problem solving about teaching. So I worked in several centers for teaching and learning at University of Delaware, Virginia Tech, IU. I feel like I'm missing one. I have to go back to my CV.
Tracey Birdwell:And now I'm in a center for teaching and learning at Purdue. I have also along the way worked in learning technologies. When I got my degree in instructional design at Virginia Tech, I also worked in learning technology. So like helping with their LMS, but diving into the world of, you know, ed tech. So that kind of gave me a different spot.
Tracey Birdwell:And then when I was, I was at IU for ten years, I led the MosaiQ Active Learning Initiative, which was an active learning initiative tied to our active learning classrooms and really exploring, how we could design and build spaces that facilitated active learning approaches for instructors all over Indiana University, which has eight undergraduate serving campuses. And I jumped over to Purdue, just in January. So I've been here for a little while and I'm helping to establish, Purdue's campus as they expand their footprint into Indianapolis. So Purdue and West Lafayette in a cornfield. Purdue, Indianapolis is downtown.
Tracey Birdwell:So there's a there'll be a lot that Purdue has to offer for the state of Indiana and for all students who come there.
Jared:Well, let's start with an easy question. How would you define active learning?
Tracey Birdwell:I thought
Jared:you said
Rob:easy. I know.
Tracey Birdwell:I do. I like to keep it really vague. And I think my definition I think because I led an active learning initiative, and I didn't want my answer to dictate everybody else's. And then once I gave mine, I would I would encourage everybody to develop their own. But I really, I would say something like my definition of active learning is it's an approach or a series of approaches that, actively and experientially engage, learners or students, whatever language you wanted to use, to actively engage learners in the learning process.
Tracey Birdwell:So there are lots of definitions that say active learning is collaborative learning or active learning is not lecture. But I kind of like to keep mine broad. I really like to think about it's this broad umbrella of ways to explore the questions, problems, issues inherent in a discipline as I think about it in a higher ed context.
Jared:You said experiential. I want you to speak to that because we haven't heard the term experiential yet or the adjective related to that. Tell us more about it.
Tracey Birdwell:Sure. I think of experiential as, you know, hands on the student is doing. They're experiencing the learning. They're experiencing the problem solving. This could be in an individual capacity, like just a student, their thoughts and a whiteboard paper, book, what have you, or it could be in a group sense, collaborative, students sharing ideas and deciding what they're understanding deciding their understanding together collaboratively.
Rob:It sounds like you're, I would say, moving away from, with your definition, some of the things that I've seen in the literature where people tend to compare it to passive learning. Mhmm. And they'll often use things like lecture or you mentioned a book. Mhmm. Or they'll even say it has to be done in collaboration with someone else.
Rob:So you've already broadened that for us significantly.
Tracey Birdwell:I don't believe in passive learning. I don't think that exists. I would like to say to define passive learning then. Because I actually do believe you can listen to one speak, you can use the l word lecture, and you can actively engage. I don't know.
Tracey Birdwell:Can I say language like this?
Jared:Yes. You can.
Tracey Birdwell:Yes. Okay. Lecture.
Jared:We may have to bleep it, but you can say
Tracey Birdwell:it. Okay. I think it's possible. I think that for a lecture, length is tied to expertise. I'm a historian.
Tracey Birdwell:I can go listen to somebody lecture for forty five minutes deep in a topic, but that's because I have all these points of reference. And I'm in my mind going, oh, he's engaging this debate that's addressing these works. Oh, he brought in a new idea. That's in contradistinction for what we know. I can kind of be taking notes because of my expertise level.
Tracey Birdwell:I can engage a lecture and I'm not passively. I'm receiving, I'm actively like reoriented my knowledge or kind of debating. But if I had to sit through a forty five minute lecture on an area of your expertise, I don't even know which way is up, right? Like that's too much. So maybe five minutes to give me like a foundation and then let me engage and act and engage the material.
Tracey Birdwell:So I think lecture matters. It depends on who the learner is, what they know. And I think there's a relationship between lecture and active learning too.
Jared:That aligns for me. I've been doing a lot of reading in neuroscience, and you talk about a forty five minute lecture with an area that you don't know much about. At some point, your short term memory is gonna start getting rid of all that new information. It can only hold so So, like, if you but comparison to something you already know, for forty five minutes, you're able to dialogue because it's not necessarily new information. It's just information presented Yeah.
Jared:In a different
Tracey Birdwell:So therefore, it's not passive.
Rob:Yeah. Right. You're tying some yeah. You're tying it to something else. You're tying it to things that are already existing in the the neurocortex.
Jared:Yes. I think. Yes.
Tracey Birdwell:Yeah. I'm I'm something of a cognitivist, and I love the metaphor of your area of expertise as a wall. And the more knowledge you have, the more hooks you have. And the less knowledge you have, you maybe have one hook or nothing. And if you imagine this is a really messy metaphor.
Tracey Birdwell:You're just throwing spaghetti at a wall. And if I have all these hooks because I know a lot, then I can catch all that spaghetti. Those are the ideas. Right? And if I don't have a single hook, you can throw all the spaghetti in the world, but I'm gonna I'm not gonna catch any of it.
Rob:I like it. Yeah. It sounds somewhat like your octopus.
Jared:Yeah. It's the it's the octopus juggling.
Rob:Juggling all these ideas and things. And if there's nothing there to catch it or tie it to or reference it to, then it's gonna get lost. Yeah. So I like that. That's good.
Rob:Yeah. Now I've got spaghetti in my
Tracey Birdwell:I just picture
Jared:my people throwing spaghetti at the wall now. That's all I'm thinking about.
Tracey Birdwell:Right. Okay. See now this is what you need to do with your students to teach them how the brain works. Is an active learning activity I gave you.
Rob:Get some spaghetti and then just let them start throwing it at the wall in the classroom.
Tracey Birdwell:Marinara sauce not required.
Jared:Yeah. There you go.
Rob:Oh goodness.
Jared:So what excites you the most about as you've been exploring active learning, as you've studied it, what is the most exciting part for you?
Tracey Birdwell:I think there's this wonderful feedback loop between, you know, instructors and learners, and I think it that feedback loop, we'll start there, can really change the relationship between, learners and instructors or novices and experts. I think the feedback loop comes when as, you know, an expert in your field or as the instructor, you are able to set up an activity, a thoughtful, meaningful activity that is scaffolded for their students or learners' appropriate level, you know, a lack of knowledge or what they do know. And I think by giving students something they can work with that's appropriate notice I'm not just saying an activity. Right? Giving them something a meaningful, appropriate activity to work through.
Tracey Birdwell:It's a great way to reveal what they do know, what they don't know, and their misunderstandings. And then as an instructor, now you have exactly the information that you need to know where to apply your expertise. Okay, their students have given me this feedback. They're obviously totally misunderstanding some concept, but now I've got this other feedback from students. They're completely cognizant of the background.
Tracey Birdwell:So let me give some attention to this misunderstanding and walk away from something I know that they already know. So you got this feedback loop of, you know where the students are, the instructor can support just in time learning, You know, the students can go and be pushed or facilitated to kind of the next concept. So there's this constant dialogue or there's the ability to have a dialogue if you're really engaged and active learning, you're really thinking about your instructional design, where you want them to do and where you need to take a lecture. Oops. I said the L word again, where you need a lecture to kind of bring together, you know, correct misunderstanding.
Tracey Birdwell:There's all these values and uses for lecture. Lecture isn't just one thing. And I think that can really alter the relationship between instructor and student. So, you know, instead of seeming like you are a distant, you know, knowledge holder in this ivory tower standing in front of a classroom, you're pontificating. I think when the students get to engage somebody safely and creatively in a field or according to some sort of problem sets or whatever you're working with, I think it can really allow the instructor to engage students.
Tracey Birdwell:Students become braver to maybe sort of take their own mantle of many experts or novice level experts in whatever that field is. They start to believe they can participate too. So I think it can kind of like bring a little bit of like, equilibrium and balance to that sort of relationship between instructor and the student. I know for me, I I always feel like I failed in a course in a class meeting when students haven't surprised me at some point. Now, I don't mean like they don't know anything, like they failed to do the reading, but somebody brings up a point or an idea that sort of gets at the main thing in a different way or, you know, to give them enough space to be creative in the context of what they're doing.
Tracey Birdwell:I think that sort of feedback loop, the reevaluating of roles and relationships can really generate some wonderful, thoughtful work from them even as they are trying to explore their world.
Rob:So how do you accomplish this in your classroom? I mean, I'm I'm sitting here thinking about Socratic methodology. I know I know that's probably one way, but I'm sure there's multiple ways. And it sounds to me that you're also amplifying starting with the student, where they're at, what they know, what they don't know. You use the term scaffolding, I believe.
Rob:Can you just let our listeners know what do you mean by scaffolding? What other kind and then what other kinds of of methodologies would you use in terms of keeping this feedback loop going? And yeah.
Tracey Birdwell:Scaffolding would be the idea that students don't really know yet what they don't know or how to engage in a process or how to explore certain ideas. So you give them a little bit of support, to help get them maybe their halfway. So maybe you suddenly have freshmen and they're reading, essays in your field and they've never read lab reports or a particular type of writing before. And you might need to teach them how to read it instead of say, read this and get back to me and tell me what's important. You might need to say, let's scaffold this and say, these are the parts of a lab report.
Tracey Birdwell:Let me identify the parts of a lab report before for you. And maybe you can talk about the different sections of a lab report. And then once you kind of identify sort of the baseline of what they need to know, you can ask sort of higher level questions. But scaffolding would be sort of not throwing them in the deep end, letting students swim. I'm mixing metaphors right and left here with the spaghetti.
Tracey Birdwell:Just open it up for me. But, you know, let them in the shallow end of the pool, let them get acclimated, and then they can go deeper and deeper as they understand what they're doing a bit more.
Rob:Is this Gagne's nine steps? I mean, do you follow that? And for those that don't know what in the world I just said, maybe because it sounds an awful lot like it a little bit.
Tracey Birdwell:Yeah. I I used to have the nine steps memorized. I kind of think of, like, Vygotsky's, like, zone of proximal development. So, you you know, there's
Jared:That's my jam.
Tracey Birdwell:Yeah. Yeah. I love ZPD. I used to have a really great was it metanome for, Gagne's, you know, steps, but I don't remember it now. But the zone of proximal development is sort of what students can do on their own.
Tracey Birdwell:You've got your area of expertise here, and this the middle is where they need help. They reach the point that they can't do it anymore and they need some help. But if they can get a little bit of support, then they can move further in what they understand. So there's that moment of trying to find the zone of proximal development. You're trying to develop them and support them and kind of moving on to the next stage.
Tracey Birdwell:So that's kinda how I see scaffolding is like, ah, here's the point at which they can't go anymore. Like and and what what's the least I can give them so that they can start to, you know, kind of get their sea legs again and and go further.
Jared:And you remove the scaffolds when you realize that they've reached the end of that zone.
Tracey Birdwell:Correct. Yes.
Jared:Right.
Rob:Well, that's gonna be relative to the student, which then gets back to competency based education.
Jared:It does get back to competency based education.
Rob:Because not everybody's going to arrive at the same point at the same time.
Jared:Right. Differentiation comes in too. Your students come in with different needs and different levels, different ZPDs, and then you gotta you gotta accommodate for that as well.
Tracey Birdwell:There's a little trick I've done in the past to try to help address that in a class meeting. So you know how sometimes occasionally student might not have done their reading or their work before a course. Have you heard of this?
Rob:What?
Jared:Hold on. Slow down. This is this is groundbreaking.
Tracey Birdwell:I mean, like, maybe one time you've seen it. So one of my one of my course meetings, I remember thinking, okay. We're gonna have a full discussion of this book, but there are gonna be people in this room who haven't read it. There are gonna be people in this room who earnestly read it, but did it a week ago. And they've had a chemistry final and five others like an earnest student, but, you know, they have these other courses.
Tracey Birdwell:So I don't wanna look at them as like recalcitrant. And there are some people who've read it but don't understand it because it's just not like really their jam. So I I felt like, okay. I wanna be compassionate about this range that's coming into my class, but we're going to be reading the book. And I don't want them to feel left out that they showed up and maybe they haven't read it or didn't understand it, or it's been a minute since they read it.
Tracey Birdwell:So I would do, let's say Frederick Douglass, A Narrative in the Life of American Slave. So we're going to have our big discussion of that. And by the way, I do a big jigsaw when we get in there. But here's what I do to like trick them into thinking we're just like, you know, we're beginning the discussion, but really I'm trying to scaffold them so we're at a similar enough place where we could go forward. So I get up there and I'm at the whiteboard and I say, okay, let's get into it.
Tracey Birdwell:Let's get our sea legs. What do we remember about this book? Okay. Salient What's point that came to you and somebody will say, you know, this, the other thing, and then I'll jump in and say, well, where was he born? What do we know about where he was born?
Tracey Birdwell:Oh, we really don't know. Oh, okay. Well, let's put this up because I'm going to need to talk about that later. Mhmm. Right?
Tracey Birdwell:Because because I I asked the question, they gave an answer. I wrote it on the board. He doesn't really know yet because, you know, because he's slave for record keeping. This is, you know, significant. And so I would just kind of get them to talk about significant moments, write it on the board, and then I know I want to talk about some other things.
Tracey Birdwell:And then I would ask them questions and they answer. Now keep in mind, I know some people have read and some people haven't, but here's what I've done. I have just highlighted maybe eight of the stories that I need them to all kind of know about to be able to engage in discussion. So if you just, if you didn't read, but you listened to those eight things and I put them on the board, you actually have enough information to participate that day. Not enough to make an A on the final, but enough to be able to play.
Tracey Birdwell:You have all the tools, the toys to play in the discussion. At least participate, not not be the the biggest, most, thoughtful contributor, but you get to you get a seat at the table. You feel like you do. So that's I'm just sitting there going, oh, let's let's what are we what are we talking about? Let's remember and kind of acting like it and it's it's a no big deal activity.
Tracey Birdwell:I'm just getting us on board. But when we say something important, I write it on the board, and I I reaffirm to the people who knew what what they should have known that, yes, you're correct. Thank you so much for contributing. But also people who didn't do the reading, please look over here during our discussion. Yeah.
Tracey Birdwell:It's a it's a way to let let give everybody access to the activity for the day. And I very realistically reminded everybody what we're talking about because they just came from another class. Like, are they supposed to be on point?
Jared:Yeah. It's good that you're cognizant of the fact that your your class isn't the only one that exists in the world for the semester.
Rob:What?
Jared:Yeah, know. Quite the shocker, I know.
Jared:I do wanna ask you about let's throw you into a scenario where you're outside of a classroom and you walk in and you see activities going on or whatever it is, how do you know that you're in an active learning environment? Like what are the key characteristics of when you walk in and go active learning's being done here or active learning is not being done here. What are the does an active learning classroom look like?
Tracey Birdwell:I can tell you one thing that I would get at conferences. I would talk about active learning classrooms. I would always get some professor. You know, I'm at conference, and I don't always get faculty. And a faculty will come up to me and tell me their biggest problem.
Tracey Birdwell:They love to be in an active learning classroom. It's going great. Their students are excited. The grades have improved. The guests who hate their active learning classroom and their active learning approaches, their neighbors.
Tracey Birdwell:Because their class is noisy. Uh-huh. And people are I mean, like, again, I'm not sure I'm allowed to say this on, you know, the podcast. People are laughing and smiling. So, obviously, learning isn't happening.
Tracey Birdwell:Right? Because they're having fun.
Jared:Yeah.
Tracey Birdwell:They're loud, and they're having fun. So I would not say that volume is correlated to active learning because you can do any activity, and it could be useless. Right? Like, if it's not thought out, if it's not like good instructional design, if it's not scaffolded where your students need to be. However, if you have your students doing activities, collaborating, doing something collective, there's going to be some noise.
Tracey Birdwell:Conversely, active learning can happen as a solo gig. I love asking, groups of students if we're going to do a group activity. I love to say, okay, in a minute, we're going to talk about X or Y. Everybody has a piece of paper in front of them or like a Google Sheet, whatever. I want you to brainstorm.
Tracey Birdwell:Don't talk. We're going to brainstorm and like get these ideas out. Right? That's active learning individually. And also I do that sometimes I take up the papers.
Tracey Birdwell:So I'll leave them during the activity so the quiet people can go look at all their they're not lost in like the chaos. They can say I had 10 good ideas, You know? And then sometimes I ask people to put their names down, and then I can go look at those ideas later and maybe see who I need to call on in the future because they got a lot going on. So there's activity afoot. Volume can be an indicator, but not always.
Rob:Based on what we've talked about so far, what would you tell our listeners? You know, we we've got folks that are higher ed teachers. We also have k through 12 teachers that listen to us. We have people in industry that listen to us. What would you tell them?
Rob:What would be that homework, as we like to say, how to approach teaching in an active learning manner?
Tracey Birdwell:I would say I have two things. One is a starter activity. I would say in thinking about class rooms, the number one tool people ask me how to use is a whiteboard. They literally say, how do I use a whiteboard? Now they know how it functions, right?
Tracey Birdwell:Marker on surface. But what they're saying is how do I utilize this in my course? And I consider the whiteboard sort of the gateway tool to active learning because they know how it functions and they know if you got markers that work, it's guaranteed to function. Unlike sometimes technology, like if the internet goes out, whatever, that calms the nerves. And what it really like, I'll have them do an activity where the students are writing or drawing on the board.
Tracey Birdwell:I sort of, I actually mixed the faculty do this and we break down what we're doing because there are many steps. You needed an appropriate prompt that makes sense in the context of what you're doing. You need to have like classroom management skills to get everybody up. No, really everyone go to the board in groups of six. You need to think about how long this activity should take and how much to let it breathe.
Tracey Birdwell:Right? Like if it's five minutes, it'll take five minutes, but maybe you want to give eight because you want the students to talk and like loosen up a little bit. You know how to bring everybody together. Do you share out everything? Do you share one thing?
Tracey Birdwell:Do you have the students look at each other's? What's the feedback as a peer to peer as an instructor? Are you building from that activity? And so one of the reasons I just say, you're starting, get students on a whiteboard, or you can buy these little whiteboards that are you can go on Amazon or whatever. You get whiteboards that are this big, like a whole pack of erasers and markers.
Tracey Birdwell:Every time I show faculty, they they run out and buy them because you can just carry them to class. A small whiteboard, very cheaply purchased. It it's a remarkable way to get faculty comfortable with all those steps. Now once faculty get comfortable, like, for the first time really engaging and then figuring out where to design and how to manage all that, the number one thing that people do once they start doing active learning is do the same thing over and over again. Think pair share.
Tracey Birdwell:This is great. I'm gonna do think pair share every class period. Well, that gets boring too. So I think step two, once you've sort of gotten your sea legs under you, variety. You know, maybe it's think pair share one day, maybe it's a gallery walk the next day, maybe you're doing something in Google Docs the next time.
Tracey Birdwell:You don't have to use a different tool every single class meeting, but ask yourself if you're doing, you know, some version of think pair share every meeting or just eight times in the semester, give some variety. It's students will kind of like learn how to do school and kind of coast once they know the instructor is going to do this every time. I can actually anticipate they're doing it, go ahead and come up with my response and go to sleep for the rest of class. So variety really, facilitates, you know, active learning and its effectiveness. Cause then you start going, okay, well, activity makes sense with, you know, which concept or what tool?
Tracey Birdwell:I have screens. I have digital screens and wireless sharing software in this classroom. How can I utilize that? Right? And so you kind of start to be able to think about what you have in your space and how that makes sense.
Tracey Birdwell:So I have whiteboards one semester, don't the next semester. It screens. How do I do that? I've got nothing next semester. Maybe I can bring in paper or flip chart paper the next to do an activity.
Tracey Birdwell:So once you kinda get people going, encourage variety because that's more fun.
Rob:Well, this has been extremely helpful. Thank you.
Jared:I have so many more questions, but that's fine. We're sad to have you back on and talk about
Tracey Birdwell:Okay.
Jared:How you're learning spaces or two. A part two episode. But I we really do appreciate your time for sure.
Tracey Birdwell:Absolutely.
Jared:It's good to have someone in the Midwest doing this as well. Good old Indianapolis, good old boilermaker. I don't know anything else that's Purdue related. It's the only thing I know is the Boilermakers.
Rob:That's that's
Jared:And the big drum.
Rob:Yes. They have a Yeah.
Jared:Thank you so much, Dr. Birdwell. We appreciate your time. That's gonna do it for us on the Transform Your Teaching podcast. Be sure to like and subscribe on your podcast platform. If you have any insights on active learning or questions, send us an email at CTLPodcastcederville.edu
Jared:And be sure to check out our blog at cederville.edu/focusblog. Thanks.