The new dalek/TEAL/Active rooms

URLs, videos

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• http://media.gla.ac.uk/web/news/campusenews/learningandteachinghub.mp4
• http://moodle2.gla.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=9933

• BBC news item on active learning. The BBC filed this under business not tech.; and push change in the teaching design rather than in the tech.

References (from a TEAL presentation)

• Bligh, D.A. (1972) What's the use of lectures? Harmondsworth, Penguin.
• Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987) Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin March, pp.3-7 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED282491
• Chiu, P.H.P. and Cheng, S.H. (2016) Effects of active learning classrooms on student learning: a two-year empirical investigation on student perceptions and academic performance. Higher Education Research and Development Onlinefirst: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07294360.2016.1196475?scroll=top&needAccess=true
• Cuseo, J. (2007) The empirical case against large class size: adverse effects on the teaching, learning and retention of first-year students. The Journal of Faculty Development 21 (1) 5-21.
• Gibbs, G. (2010) Dimensions of Quality. York: Higher Education Academy. heacademy
• Huxham, M. (2005) Learning in lectures. Do interactive windows help? Active Learning in Higher Education 6 (1) 17-31.
• Kuh, G. & Hu, S. (2001) The effects of student-faculty interaction in the 1990s. The Review of Higher Education 24 (3) 309-332.
• Michael, J. (2006) Where's the evidence that active learning works? Advanced Physiology Education 30 159-167.

The independent issues underlying these rooms

1. Active learning, regardless of technology e.g. having group discussions. Many pedagogical techniques and designs for active learning are very old, and effective. They interact, though, with what is afforded by room furniture, and by new technology. Examples include:
   • Jigsaw
   • Various uses of classroom voting (A current and supported system for this is YACRS.)
   • Mazur's "peer instruction" (using brain teaser questions)
   • Snowball discussions
   • Identifying what issues an audience most wants to discuss, using two phases:
     1. Open-ended input on ideas or issues in the general area are solicited from the audience, and "texted" in.
     2. The presenter picks out the most frequently recurring themes; turns each of them into rating questions ("How important is this issue to you?"); and the results from these quick-vote MCQ ratings are used to set the agenda and the order in which each item is addressed.
   • 2cc: the two (broadcast) channel classroom   A talk about this   (Other notes here)
2. Room capacity and layout.
   • Even with seating unfriendly to discussion (e.g. fixed seats all facing the front) group discussions are quite easy to arrange if the room is used only to about 25% capacity, or up to say 50%. The groups can space themselves so they don't interrupt each other too much; and climbing over seats to reach the middle is OK.
   • These problems are not solved in the current "dalek" rooms (e.g Wolfson sem-3) with individually movable chairs, when used with as many chairs as there would be with fixed chairs. Staff report that if the room is near capacity, then latecomers cannot get from the door to the empty chairs: just as in a lecture theatre. And presumably, even if all seated, then groups will be too close to each other to hear their own group without inteference from talk from other groups.
   • Wider row spacing. Jim Boyle at Strathclyde (MechEng.) had a 100 seat lecture theatre full (room M406, James Weir Building); but the seats were arranged in groups of 4 in a shallow arc to allow discussion between 4 sitting in a row. It has a slightly wider row spacing allowing the same students to sit together each time, regardless of who arrives first.
   • Large round tables (e.g. seating 12) are bad a) because half the people at each table cannot face the front if there is any exposition from the front; b) because those on one side are nearer the next table than to those opposite them, so they cannot hear the others in their own group.
   • Failure to build rooms suited for discussion is an old failing in HEIs: as witness a book chapter on this from 50 years ago. Institutions build a few big rooms; not many small rooms, despite what is required for better teaching and learning. (?Architecture pattern book?).
   • Small staff offices prevent group discussions in offices. Given that students have similar timetables, the times they are available for tutorials are similar, so having a few group rooms that staff can book doesn't work well. Open plan offices for staff (as at Salford) prevent even 1:1 meetings with students.
3. Technology for electronic sharing.
   • EVS /   YACRS
   • 2cc type active learning compared to doing written feedback from staff.
   • Teacher has not one but several devices up front and in use. Yacrs already tends to promote this by putting into separate windows what is projected, what the students will see on their devices a teacher-only control screen, that may show things such as how many have voted, ...
   • Sharing datasets and calculations. E.g. Simon Bates' design and use of a lab for first year physics. And sharing datasets ...

Issues limiting progress

• Furniture, room architecture, crowding. (See above.)
• Screen resolution.
• Support (hardware and software) for multi-channel teaching.

  Two or more screens.
  Whether the audio (speech)of the presenter is an expansion of the visual
  (slides) OR whether it is delivering something else. [NGray, SStu on Kant]
  2cc: two broadcast;  simultaneous presenter delivery and peer interaction
  

• Software:
  New modes of use and emerging problems such as privacy control of one's own devices will sometimes need advances in software to permit the control that students and staff need. We have seen rapid evolution and improvement in the area of social networking software on control of privacy and distribution; but the issues are partly different in this new context and will probably require other developments for learning environments.
• Learning new human procedures.
  Staff and students learn and develop new social and personal practices for how to use such facilities to circumvent problems. E.g. when mobile phones first spread amongst students, staff got agitated about how these would intrude in meetings, lectures, and exams; but within a year students had adopted excellent practices in this respect (and staff somewhat more slowly).
  Similarly, problems with mobile seating may turn out to be rapidly (but not instantly) solved by staff prompting students towards different habits about moving chairs to allow access to remaining seats.
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