Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom

By L. Deslauriers, L. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, Gregory Kestin. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019

1,098 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Significance Despite active learning being recognized as a superior method of instruction in the classroom, a major recent survey found that most college STEM instructors still choose traditional teaching methods. This article addresses the long-standing question of why students and faculty remain resistant to active learning. Comparing passive lectures with active learning using a randomized experimental approach and identical course materials, we find that students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less. We show that this negative correlation is caused in part by the increased cognitive effort required during active learning. Faculty who adopt active learning are encouraged to intervene and address this misperception, and we describe a successful example of such an intervention. We compared students’ self-reported perception of learning with their actual learning under controlled conditions in large-enrollment introductory college physics courses taught using 1) active instruction (following best practices in the discipline) and 2) passive instruction (lectures by experienced and highly rated instructors). Both groups received identical class content and handouts, students were randomly assigned, and the instructor made no effort to persuade students of the benefit of either method. Students in active classrooms learned more (as would be expected based on prior research), but their perception of learning, while positive, was lower than that of their peers in passive environments. This suggests that attempts to evaluate instruction based on students’ perceptions of learning could inadvertently promote inferior (passive) pedagogical methods. For instance, a superstar lecturer could create such a positive feeling of learning that students would choose those lectures over active learning. Most importantly, these results suggest that when students experience the increased cognitive effort associated with active learning, they initially take that effort to signify poorer learning. That disconnect may have a detrimental effect on students’ motivation, engagement, and ability to self-regulate their own learning. Although students can, on their own, discover the increased value of being actively engaged during a semester-long course, their learning may be impaired during the initial part of the course. We discuss strategies that instructors can use, early in the semester, to improve students’ response to being actively engaged in the classroom.

Subfields: Education, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6654e4d40bbdb61bbe5970489bdb530afeb60275

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

1. Elizabeth Lugosi
2. Elena L. Glassman
3. Zana Buçinca
4. Krzysztof Z Gajos
5. Phoebe Lin
6. G. Uribe

In Social Psychology

1. Nina Eduljee
2. Laurie Murphy
3. K. Croteau

Citations in the corpus

• Proxy tasks and subjective measures can be misleading in evaluating explainable AI systems (2020, background): “that decision, and incorporating that information into the decisionmaking process requires cognitive effort and the existing evidence suggests that preference does not predict performance on cognitive tasks [8, 12, 37].”
• To Trust or to Think (2021, background): “But when evaluated objectively, their actual learning and performance was better with the more cognitively demanding, active instruction [18].”
• Active learning strategies with positive effects on students’ achievements in undergraduate mathematics education (2020, background): “Fakayode et al. (2014) list strategies of different institutions that have been developed to motivate and improve students’ success. George (2010) summarizes different ways an instructormay attempt to motivate the whole class together or students individually.”
• Teacher-Centered versus Student-Centered Teaching (2021, result): “In contrast, Deslauriers et al. (2019) in a study of 149 physics students found that students felt they learned more in a lecture-based class versus one that used active learning strategies.”