On Active Learning, Part I

In a previous post about The Sage on the Stage, I said that active learning requires more than class discussions. In this post, I will say a bit more about what I think is required in order to make students active participants in the learning process.

First, I think that encouraging students to become active participants in the learning process requires that we—as professors—adopt certain attitudes:

1. Assume that students want to learn. As I see it, our job is not to ignite the fire of learning. Rather, our job is not to extinguish it and to make sure that it keeps burning. (“All men [and women] by nature desire to know,” right?). Lecturing seems like a sure way to extinguish the fire of learning. On the other hand, activities, such as small group work on case studies, team debates, role playing, peer review, etc., are ways to get students active and engaged. (More on these activities in Part II.)
2. Put students first. In designing our courses we should not think about what we want to cover. Instead, we should think about what students would find most interesting, exciting, and useful to them. I usually do this by designing my courses based on an overarching theme, through which I can cover the stuff that I think students will find most interesting without “sacrificing” philosophical content. For example, I designed one of my courses around the big theme of surviving death (always a hit), through which I got to cover mind, personal identity, and so on.
3. Aim to leave students with something of lasting value. Another sure way to kill students’ curiosity is to require them to know what Big Name said about X and what Big Shot said in response. Instead, we should do our best to make students go through the arguments on their own. To this end, we should make sure that they master the skills of critical and analytical thinking. In other words, our courses should be focused more on “thinking” rather than just “knowing.” In making sure that students master the skills of critical thinking, I see my teaching as part of a collective effort to make students better citizens.
4. Be active, too. This means at least two things: (a) recognize that students have different learning needs, and so we should be prepared to offer help in various ways (e.g., office hours, discussion board on course management system, email, etc.); (b) show students that learning how to think philosophically is the most exciting, important, and useful thing they will ever learn. For example, I occasionally bring examples of bad thinking from the media and ask students to figure out why it is bad. It is a sort of “If only s/he had taken Philosophy 101, s/he wouldn’t have said that…” in-class exercise. Admittedly, this requires a lot of work. But it pays off when a student comes to you and says something like, “I used what we’ve learned in class last week. My friend and I had a disagreement about X and I showed her that her argument was invalid.”

Of course, all of the above is based on my own views and personal experience. So make of it what you will. Part II will be about some strategies to make your classroom a place where students are active rather than passive.