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For students, no clear message on why active learning

matters.
Date: Sept. 11, 2020
From: The Toronto Star (Toronto, Ontario)
Publisher: CNW Group Ltd. - Toronto Star Newspapers
Document Type: Article
Length: 541 words
Content Level: (Level 5)
Lexile Measure: 1320L

Full Text:
Byline: William Pang Contributor William Pang is a student at McGill University.

For the past week, I've been attending classes on my couch, an eerie experience that has made me reminisce about in-person
classes. Don't get me wrong though - I'm thankful for not having to tread to the lecture hall just to meekly ask my classmates to shift
their arm-tables as I adroitly squeeze through without tipping a water bottle.

What I realized was that hour-long lectures were made more bearable because I was surrounded by friends. Not that I could really
chat with them in class, but I missed seeing the visceral reactions whenever a professor would show a complicated diagram or
hearing the soft groans when an assignment deadline was announced. With microphones placed on mute and videos being optional,
many students are - at least theoretically - forced to focus their attention only on the instructor.

Needless to say, there will always be students checking their Instagram feed, regardless of the delivery format. But many students
are now seeing in a magnified way that simply reading through PowerPoint slides does not work. And this has left us to wonder:
Despite all the talk from the education sphere about active learning and flipped classrooms, why are we not seeing these well-
documented pedagogical techniques put into place now?

There are two parts to this puzzle. Many professors want to change, but they don't have enough resources, time, or support to do it.
The second part is that students don't understand the purpose of doing all this - they simply see it as an experimental teaching tool
that overenthusiastic instructors want to try out. When both masses add up, any momentum for change gets cancelled out.

For students at least, there lacks a clear messaging as to why active learning matters. This might be an inherent flaw in academia,
where language is often shrouded in jargon and inaccessible language. But if I were to boil down the "think-pair-share," "problem-
based learning" or "concept mapping" activities into a three-word campaign slogan, it would be this: Let students teach.

While letting students teach might sound counterintuitive at face value, students with proper guidance and sufficient background
knowledge are better suited to explain complex topics. This is because students are less likely to come with a set of inherent
assumptions, which means they will have to explain a particular concept from the ground up. Students are also less disposed to use
academic syntax, which can dispel the arcane aura that often shrouds academia.

As a final semester student, I've also come to realize that the specific knowledge I've learned in a particular class is somewhat trivial -
I'm not going to, for instance, be able to regurgitate the integrals of trigonometric functions. Rather, being able to explain concepts in
a broad, accessible fashion have proven to be vital, as it shows employers an understanding of the subject while possessing the
agility to apply it to a particular scenario.

There is perhaps no better time for instructors and students glued to their monitors to work collaboratively and implement lasting
changes in the way we learn. Let's take advantage of it - before old habits set in again.

William Pang is a student at McGill University.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 CNW Group Ltd. - Toronto Star Newspapers. Torstar Syndication Services, a division of Toronto Star
Newspapers Ltd.
http://www.thestar.com/
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"For students, no clear message on why active learning matters." Toronto Star [Toronto, Ontario], 11 Sept. 2020, p. A16. Gale In
Context: Global Issues, https://link-gale-com.zulib.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/A635104950/GIC?u=zayed&sid=GIC&xid=6444f9f4.
Accessed 12 Sept. 2020.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A635104950