Montserrat:

I think it depends on the quality of learning. If the student actively engages in learning and we can see progress being made in understanding/applying concepts, then teacher is well on the way of achieving his/her goal. In contrast, if the learner joins learning but depends heavily on the teacher and others in the group to learn then it may be a case that the learner is "shadowing" learning thru others.

Best regards,

Debra

Definitely so. Rather than giving a fish, the mission of a teacher is to teach how to fish. This is the ideal of autonomous learning. It is also the sign of our time: We are migrating from a spectator culture to a participatory culture (Jenkins).

Dear Montserrat Hernández-López,

The teacher always has to think on students and motivate them through questions, seek answers, to argue and give them some basic tasks that have to do self in class. If students do something, scrabble, thinking and preparing better learn. I suggest you that you must prepare work sheets for students for filling. In the discussion, the students can infer how they have succeeded in learning. What is the debate more intense, their brains work faster to prove to you that he knows it.

Best regards

Thank to all.

Answering another RG question, I wrote about group dynamics because I see the group dynamics are very useful in order to get active participants who feel they take part in their learning. But this does not mean that the teacher ceases to be a guide: he/she must be guide but an adaptable guide to the level of each student.

Regards.

 A good Question I think How we know the achieve the goal the It depends how you plane ..I think a feed back and Review Questionnaires are key tool to know your out come.The quality of education is depends upon Your outcome............

I recently led a residential experience for pre-service teachers where I worked with two other colleagues to model the benefits of active, real-world learning. The students were given an overarching enquiry, and then had to choose a focus and develop their own enquiry that they investigated in the local town themselves. As tutors, this did not mean we had no role - but our role shifted from being 'sage' to facilitator as we set the weekend up, introduced key ideas, and then scaffolded their learning when appropriate. As the weekend progressed, the students themselves then became the 'experts' in the area they were investigating. In a final plenary session we reflected on the whole experience and asked them to apply it to how they might change their practices as future teachers. It was very powerful.

Research literature supports active involvement of students. However, important make sure the activities are relevant to the learning tasks and not just busying. Moreover, passive learners and active learners may learn different things, both learning nonetheless.

Dear MontSerrat, First of all, may you elaborate what do you consider "the learner joins learning"?

Are you talking about learner's engagement?

Yes, Renato, I'm talking about learner's engagement. Forgive me if I failed to explain.

I wanted to say that, in my opinion, today teaching should not be imposed with a closed program, but to be the doorway to concerns of students.That is, to set minimum levels in each subject and each student find a way to acquire them, with the help of the teacher.

 I think so. The Dale cone expressed exactly this.

http://teachernoella.weebly.com/uploads/1/6/5/3/16531378/2437252_orig.png

Dear Soh Kaycheng, you observed an important point: Is all learning important, meaningful to achieve the planned objectives?

For example, Freitas and Levene (2004) research about videogame to support learning observed that no all playing are beneficial to learning. 

Reference: 

FREITAS, S. I.; LEVENE, M. (2004) An Investigation of The Use of Simulations and Video Gaming for Supporting Exploratory Learning and Developing Higher-Order Cognitive Skills. IADIS International Conference Cognition and Exploratory Learning in Digital Age. [Online] Available in http://www.iadis.net/dl/final_uploads/200407L005.pdf (Accessed on: 10 December 2009)

Thank you so much, Clauda. I'm afraid I did not know Dale Cone.

Kind regards.

I certainly believe that. In addition, I believe that is the essential to enjoying life. 

First off, I'd like to offer a comment to consider.  The suggestion of passive observer seems to tacitly suggest that lectures or other forms of direct instruction are, by design, intended to be passive and non-engaging.  However, there are many ways through which lectures and other forms of direct instruction can be highly engaging - but it requires deliberate action by the instructor.

Second, I'd suggest that simply engaging them in the learning process does not adequately reflect a key to learning.  They still need to be engaged in thinking about the content/skills intended.  For instance, I supervised one teacher who had an incredibly engaging activity in which her students were baking biscuits to have while they participated in a mock experience of slaves on the Underground Railroad.  They were more engaged than almost any students I have seen in any classroom, yet they learned mostly about how to make biscuits, which was not the intention of the instructor.  As such, it takes careful focus by the instructor to design learning experiences in which the focus is on the intended content and skills and not physical activity in joining the learning experience.

With that shared, I would suggest you check out the following:

  Mayer, Richard E.  2004.  Should there be a three-strikes rule against discovery learning?  American Psychologist 59(1), 14-19.

  Willingham, Daniel T.  2009.  Why Students Don't Like School.

Kevin response is right on the mark. Direct instruction does not have to leave the learner in a passive receptive state. It does however require a much more deliberate and thoughtful effort on the part of the instructor to create content and exercises that engage the learner. Active learning (i.e., manipulatives, discovery and project-based learning, etc) that is focused on specific learning objectives that deepen and enrich the content can be highly effective - so long as the learner is actually working on meaningful and aligned tasks, contributing and sharing - playing an active role with other learners, and actually completing or making progress toward the learning objectives. The distinction between active and passive learning is really not appropriate anymore - instead, when observing a classroom we should be asking ourselves whether the learner's engagement in the learning activity is deep or shallow -  I have seen students on the edge of their seats with an outstanding and engaging teacher delivering a compelling lecture. Lecture's should provide multiple opportunities for students to transition from listening to thinking, sharing, discussing, and co-constructing knowledge with their peers.

This is often the stated aim, and is usually achieved by at least a few students, however incompetent the staff.  Indeed I know of a case where the students made a formal complaint about a lecturer, stating that his lectures were so incomprehensible that they actually had to read the textbook in order to pass the course.

In practice, high level learning objectives are hard to assess, whereas teaching students to pass standard exam questions is comfortable for both teacher and student, and usually gets approval from the institution.

Dear Renato/Jae/Jerome/Kevin/William/Martin

I am overwhelmed with the uplifting feedback provided by you. It is a pleasure to receive answers of this level to my question. They make me think and thinking is just as rewarding for a researcher, don't you think?

Thank you so much!

Dear Renato/Jae/Jerome/Kevin/William/Martin

I am overwhelmed with the uplifting feedback provided by you. It is a pleasure to receive answers of this level to my question. They make me think and thinking is just as rewarding for a researcher, don't you think?

Thank you so much!

II agree and I consider a true active participation necessary both for students and teacher. In short: more space for activity for students, more participation for teacher then in a "standard passive" way.

Assuming that the teacher's goal is to promote development and growth, then yes, absolutely. Giving the learner their own role is not only empowering but can also bring with it ideas that even the teacher has not thought of before. The main issue here is what Kevin and William expressed far more eloquently than I myself could have, but I would like to throw in another thought to consider: engaging the learner means taking the learning to higher levels. If you look at Bloom's taxonomy (see e.g. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/)  this is quite evident. At the top of the hierarchy is creating, and this can only be done by taking active part in the process.

Thank you, Giuseppe for your words... very interesting!

And Mari, thank you for the Bloom taxonomy. Of course I'll check.

Best regards!

I remember sitting in a vast lecture theatre in my undergraduate years in liberal studies listening to an Arts Lecturer weave music, visual art and literature together in such a way that a symphony of ideas and questions were awakened inside me. I was certainly not a passive participant in that instance but an active explorer.

Many of the responses before me indicate( and I agree)  that so much depends on 'in whose hands,' the teaching springs rather than the methods used.

21st century learners are said to 'take learning into their own hands' (at home) as information is so readily available to them. Yet I argue that information is not what is needed to be educated but the intricate weaving of ideas, the making complex ideas simpler, fostering curiosity, the critical thinking inherent in information and its selection, the problem-solving that knowing teachers can bring to their students in a variety of forms.  

though your statement stands to reason, I'm not sure that one should see learning just in that way: dichotomising learning is not totally useful and me even be counter-productive.. One should accept also that being passive is also a step towards active participation. Doesn't one need to help their students go through a phase of immersion and impregnation before one can ask them to perform. One should also go into the learning habits in certain cultures where passive observation is more than recommended, it is obligatory.

Much depends on the teacher/instructor and the instructional objectives set for any instructional event. The nature of the content should also be taken into consideration. No matter how it is viewed, there must be a period in the learning process when the teacher inspires the learners through words that introduces them into the content of any instruction at the onset, the learners are usually seen as passive. By the time the learners are adequately sensitized, they can become active participants bringing their previous experiences to bear on the new knowledge as well as explore new materials to build new ideas based on the direction the teacher wants to take them to. This direction if carefully laid out during the lesson planning process makes the learners active participants in the learning process.

Dear Gloria/Mohamed/Bede Blaise.

Undoubtedly, your answers are of a great value to me.

I agree that passive learning is not incompatible with active learning. Teacher must determine the percentage of each type every hour class, using level of empathy and experience.

Thank you so much!

I'd say close. However, we must remember that it is not just from being an observer. It could be a listener or indeed a reader. I'd say our ultimate hope is for our learners to be participants in their own learning. This makes it a process rather than a one-off

You are right Gordon, thank you very much!

It is commonly (here also) assumed that the teacher has both the duty and the power to do wonderful things.  Supposing that a teacher has the ability to do so, what happens when he or she leaves?  It is my observation that university teaching duties are commonly directed, not chosen, and furthermore modules may be transferred to and from staff according to other priorities of the department, particularly with staff changes.  A young academic will be told "you have 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Monday and 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday in lecture theatres A and Z respectively to teach {insert unpopular but compulsory module here}.  Please produce an exam paper similar in style to those of the last 3 years and in accord with the published syllabus."  (A pass rate higher or lower than before may be viewed equally dimly.)  

Attempts to change a module will require some committee approval (reluctant and slow) probably both at departmental and higher levels taking at least a year.  Attempting to improve the general teaching is harder.

You are right, Martin, when you say: Attempting to improve the general teaching is harder., but I think we should always try because it is our obligation or not? We have chosen this profession and we must at least try to change what we did not like as students.

Thank you for your answer.

Monserrat- it is one thing to improve your own teaching.  My greatest respect goes to the (few) academics I know who have improved that of their colleagues.

I will paste here my reply regarding a similar question regarding "passive and active learning" and add that it is rather difficult to differentiate between the two

There seems to be an automatic assumption that activity and interactivity are core ingredients in learning and that without them the students are lurkers or slack or disengaged. My thoughts about online learning are that we need to provide opportunities for learners who learn best through interactivity whilst at the same time respecting learners with different styles. Absence of evidence of learning activity should not be confused with evidence of absence of learning. 

Regards, Kevin

Yes, you are right again, Martin.

Thank you!

And thanks to the answers from Jae, Kevin Krahenbhul, and Kevin Larkin. I'm very much agree with you, Kevin, when you say: Absence of evidence of learning activity Should not Be Confused With evidence of absence of learning.

Your answers have been very interesting. They made me reflect and that makes me happy. Thanks so much also for the papers that you have attached, Kevin Krahenbuhl.

Best regards.

Claudia, so sorry!.

I read your answer among others and I think I did not thank you kindly. I send my apologies.

Regards!

Grateful for there placement, Montserrat! I use a lot this diagram to show my students that participation is very important for learning.

Who don´t know de Dale Cone Theory, I suggest these readings:

https://www.etsu.edu/uged/etsu1000/documents/Dales_Cone_of_Experience.pdf

http://media.openedu.com.cn/media_file/netcourse/asx/xdjyjs/public/05xgzy/bg10.pdf

Claudia, thank you for taking your valuable time and for the suggested readings. I will go through them. Best regards

 Confucious was right, and engineering education formerly had a great practical content.  However, larger classes, belief in abstract theory and the lure of bells and whistles such as PowerPoint and Smart Boards has led to an oracular style of teaching (without guaranteed learning).  Students can now put together virtual circuits instead of burning themselves with a soldering iron and finding poor joints have affected the properties of the circuit.

Kevin Larkin's  point is important - what students actually learn is often not the lofty ideal stated by the college but some more rote learning or automatic process.  Both rote learning and automatic processes can be valid learning objectives: we do have to memorize some arbitrary things such as names, and it is usual to learn to ride a bicycle without understanding its theoretical basis (which is extremely hard).

It is my view that there is a real need for students to learn by spending time messing around in practical way, and not just following lab instructions to get the desired answer and the even more desired marks.  However, it can be hard to get both the university administration and the students themselves to recognize the value of such time.

Dear Colleagues,

I am very happy about the idea of including this question because of the very interesting and intelligent contributions being generated. Thank you very much for yours, Markovic and Martin John.

Kind regards.

Learning models, where students work in groups and come to think what they are watching, what variables involved, we can measure, we can change, etc; They are today allow the teacher to discretely maintain control of the agenda but without obstructing the discussion that occurs between students, or act as an authority or a source of knowledge.

Students then design their experiment about the questions that have arisen. How much data will be recorded decide how they are going to record, how to scan. There is an established process or a magic recipe to follow.

Thanks for your answer Gonzalo.

I think this is the future of education, or perhaps it is this: the teacher as an individual guide to what each student wants to know a basic program for each subject.

Thanks for your answer Gonzalo

I think this is the future of education, or perhaps it is the present: the teacher as an individual guide to what each student wants to know a basic program for each subject

Regards.