Active Learning: Rhetoric and Propaganda

I spent some time looking for research on ‘flipped classrooms’, which turned out to be non-productive time. [I found one study showing negative attitudes from students about a flipped college class, and one study showing improved learning outcomes for a high school class.] My search was for sound research on the methodologies; sadly, most of what I found was rhetoric and propaganda. You might try a search yourself; let me know if you find more research with reasonably sound design.

The zeal these days is about two ideas (at the college level): Flipped classes, and “MOOC” (massive online open classes). Most of us will not make a choice to do a MOOC, and most of our community college students will not take one. My concern is more with the flipped classroom ideas.

The narrative about flipping almost always centers on two phrases: active learning and collaborative processes. I will not argue that active learning is a bad thing. However, here is a truism:

Learning is always active.

Learning is in the brain, and the brain needs to be active for learning. [I’m not being strictly correct here, as some researchers include memory alone as a learning activity: people can remember a surprising amount without their brains being actively focused on that material; ‘large’ here is a comparison to none or to random amounts above none. Like most faculty, I am mostly concerned about learning that exceeds memory of information.]

Using a concept of ‘active learning’ is to imply that learning can be something else. My impression is that the use of the phrase is meant to convey “observable activity by students”. Do students learn better when chairs are turned, when they move within the room, when a product is created? The problem here is that we often have students who are not truly attending within the class; if we design some method that creates more attention, learning is very likely to improve. Flipping a class may be one method to get students to attend to the material; it’s not the only method, and may not be the best method, of doing so.

We treat collaborative learning as a certain “Good Thing”. I’ve read about research and theory related to this for a while now, and I think we tend to over-simplify the issues involved with group processes: language, culture, and power all need to be managed to create the benefits of collaborative learning. Some of these can be managed by using very structured processes; I suspect that most of us do not have the background to use those methods, and our easier methods can damage student learning. [Most commonly: Students focus on the stated outcome for the group, rather than the learning we intend that they attend to.

All of this reminded me again of the erroneous use of “Dale’s Cone of Learning”. See http://raypastore.com/wordpress/2012/04/bad-instructional-design/ for a brief review of that.

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