Engaging colleagues in active learning pedagogies through mentoring and co-design

Abstract

When implemented correctly, active learning pedagogies increase student engagement with discipline content. In addition, there is accumulating evidence that they also positively impact the learning of this content. This is particularly relevant for teaching science disciplines because many students perceive science as being difficult to fully understand. However, an ongoing problem is that instructors have difficulty implementing active learning pedagogies effectively and therefore see no benefit to it. Without persistence or guidance, instructors can become discouraged and return to a more traditional style of teaching. We report on how the Faculty of Science at Vanier College is getting more instructors to engage in active learning pedagogies through mentoring and activity co-design.

The link between flipped and active learning: a scoping review

“…Advocates of FL argue that the success of the model is due to its foundations in active learning pedagogy (Adams and Lenton 2017;Eichler and Peeples 2016;Jensen, Kummer, and Godoy 2015;Yang, Lin, and Hwang 2019). For instance, the difference in performance between flipped and traditional classrooms disappears when both use active-learning techniques (DeLozier and Rhodes 2017;O'Flaherty and Phillips 2015).…”

Progressive Use of Active Learning in Electrical Engineering Courses

“…One of the coaches (i.e., second author) received an internal grant award from the Provost's Office to propagate active learning in the engineering school through this one-on-one mentoring and coaching approach. This community-of-practice and mentoring approach in the propagation of active learning has also been used elsewhere, with noted benefits [17].…”