Active Teaching for Today’s Students

It has been an interesting week! Classes started, and I have enjoyed the energy that students bring. I observed a Zoom synchronous session, launched our online yeast course, participated in a virtual workshop, and attended a faculty and instructional design virtual break. At the same time, I’m working on scheduling and planning our summer programs while trying to help partners and collaborators. I feel behind yet enjoy learning what others are doing and how students approach and interact both in real-time and with our structured online activities. This evening I watched a recorded 2020 Lilly Conference session by Drs. Rebecca Toothaker and Pamela Cook on active teaching for the next generation students — currently in our courses. Both are faculty at Bloomsburg University in the nursing program. They explained who is the gen Z student, born from 1996 to 2012 by reviewing survey data and research about this generation of students and their preferences. The characteristics presented for the next generation made sense based on the incredible amount of information we have access to today and the connectivity with others. Toothaker described constantly learning, connected, interactive, cautious with expenses. They presented data from Nicholas 2020 that 51% of Gen S reported preferring learning by doing, 38% by seeing (reading), and only 12% by listening/lecture, yet faculty in this study spend 60% lecturing, 15% with student independent work, and 15% with student group work… these numbers were really interesting. Toothaker emphasized stating the why and connections of the content we teach. Another set of data presented reported learner preferences for generation Z students with around 80% mentioning videos, gaming, podcasts, and digital textbooks. Several strategies and suggested techniques were then presented. These included avoiding long PowerPoint presentations, using multiple teaching modalities, creating an active learning environment, remembering the why, and incorporating soft skill development with activities and assignments. Digging deeper and starting with the why and real-world connections were mentioned as ways, along with evidence-based teaching, to engage students. Toothaker and Cook described several popular active teaching strategies: think-pair-share, clickers, polls, case studies, simulations, one minute papers, games… The speakers shared tips, rationale, and extensions of these strategies. For example, reporting out in groups or in the chat after a think-pair(-share). I thought the prompts they shared for minute papers along with how to visualize the responses of the group and share back as a type of formative assessment were helpful. The prompts for reflective journaling will help me this semester:

  • What have I changed my mind about?
  • What were three main things I learned from this lesson?
  • What did I previously think was true but now know to be wrong?
  • What is one thing that I learned in this lesson that I may be able to use in the future?
  • What did we not cover that I expected we should?

I also had never heard the term unfolding cases! They provide a lecture as voiceover PowerPoint and then present the case study. The students can use their text and resources to respond to and address the topics from the case. The presenters also described the use of Kahoot and Jeopardy templates. I like the Jeopardy variation in which the instructor gets the points if the students respond incorrectly! For clickers, Cook mentioned doing sets of ten questions before and after a lecture. The explanation of virtual escape rooms was useful: place students in groups, create questions, students work in breakout rooms to respond to clues and reveal a code to unlock and win. I learned about the national surveys about generation Z students and their learning preferences and useful adaptations of powerful active teaching strategies!

Student using a laptop on floor next to sofa
How do students in our classrooms prefer to interact with information? What is known from surveys of generation Z, and how can we use this information to extend and adapt active teaching strategies? Image credit: WordPress free image library.