Chapter 10
Alternative Approaches to Active Learning in the Classroom

Bean introduces the reader to the challenge of creating a collaborative classroom experience while lecturing. Lecturing is typically teacher centered and allows few opportunities for active engagement. Of course, lecturing is very appropriate at certain times when the teacher wishes to deliver information. All too often, this experience may be mundane and only a few students are being reached in the process. The goal of an educator is to maximize the student's experience of receiving information into a tangible concept that the student can actually work and identify with.

I would now like to discuss Bean’s ideas that I find interesting and the most helpful for students.

1) Develop Guided-Journal Tasks Keyed to Your Lectures

I feel that I do this now in my English 100 lab. Each day my students spend the first ten minutes in class writing a response to a Dialogue Journal topic. From now to the end of the semester, I will be generating these questions from their Final Critical Reflections grading assessment list. Hence, this will enable the students to implement these ideas into their paper. Rick McCraw is the one responsible for giving me this idea!

2) Ask Students to Question Your Lectures

This method is a creative way to help students engage in critical thinking. They are asked to summarize the teacher’s answer, and are asked to provide further questions on the subject matter. It’s possible that through those further questions the students may find themselves in a situation in which they might defend a certain viewpoint. The information that has been received has become useful through this interaction.

3) Increase Wait Time

I really never thought about it, but it would be nice if the students are allowed time to think about the question that has been asked. The feeling of unease may cause the student embarrassment that otherwise may have been avoided if just given enough time to sort through their thoughts.


4) Have Students Generate the Questions to Be Discussed

What an effective way to get those thoughts and questions out in the open! Bean uses the example grouping students together, and those groups collaborate about what questions they would like to have for discussion that day. I think this method helps those students who are overlooked in class discussions.

* Bean mentions the subject of class discussion. While class discussion can be useful, it is very true that only a handful of students are benefitting from this – the ones who are always talking. The shy students are not given the opportunity to share their thoughts. Every student ought to have the opportunity to share!