Active Learning in Higher Education

Within higher education, students and institutions are increasingly moving towards blended components and fully online learning coursework. Best practice online pedagogy is understood to be student-centred with a strong emphasis on social learning through collaboration. The social aspect supports frequency of engagement while collaborative activity supports cognitive engagement. Research that guides online pedagogy draws substantially from studies identifying type and frequency of students’ cognitive engagement, usually along a continuum but without the nuance of social learning. To build on that and to identify profiles of cognitive-social engagement, this study examined the content of 3,855 student posts from one course within a chat-based platform. The findings suggested six student engagement types: lurk, superficial, task, respond, expand, create. These types were then further examined along two continuums of complexity and intensity of engagement. The results present a new typology of cognitive-social learning engagement defined by four profiles: bench sitter, hustler, striker, champion. The typology was purposely fashioned using team-play acronyms to build a useable language for educators to recognise student engagement profiles and to guide learning design in social spaces online.

Digital software has been proliferating in the classroom, frequently replacing students’ hands on experiences. This article reports on a study that tested how hands on experiences with physical emerging technology, namely personal robots, drones, cameras, and echo dots, may improve or impair student learning and enhance or diminish the classroom experience. This study examines the potential impact of hands on experiences on student knowledge, skills, and values regarding emerging technology in the context of a course that employed traditional learning, defined as theoretical applications of next generation technology, namely autonomous vehicles during the first half, and hands on experiences with physical emerging technologies related to domotics, during the second half. Using three diagnostics, tweets, reflections, and discussion posts, we suggest that hands on experiences allowed students to more easily identify potential challenges with, and reduced their fears regarding, emerging technology. Additionally, our findings suggest that traditional learning methods may decrease familiarity with most technologies, whereas hands on experiences increased familiarity. Hands on experiences also appear to reverse several other trends associated with traditional learning. Ultimately, given the proliferation of technologies in the modern world and the impacts of automation, hands on experiences may be even more valuable than expected to students as they enter the workforce.

One-minute papers allow students to process what they learned during class and improve student performance. However, this activity can become monotonous and takes significantly longer than the name implies. The research described here tests the effectiveness of a briefer, more flexible version of this technique to increase the perceived relevance of the material and, in turn, performance. Students were randomly assigned to either self-generate a reflective response or answer a content-specific question generated by the instructor at the end of class. Students positively evaluated the brief reflective response activity. Moreover, answering the self-generated reflective responses was associated with greater perceived relevancy of course material to students’ daily lives compared to answering the content-specific questions. Perceived relevancy, in turn, was associated with higher examination grades. Thus, brief reflective responses are a useful tool to increase meaningful connections to course material which enhances examination performance.

Higher education has begun to shift from a teacher-centred instructional approach to a student-centred learning approach; many instructors have embraced this change by developing flipped classrooms. In the flipped classroom, students complete pre-work prior to attending class; this pre-work is often in the form of a video recording, lecture recording or reading. Class time is then repurposed to focus on knowledge application and synthesis rather than delivery. As such, it is suggested that instructors become less sage- and more guide-like in their teaching approach. The impact of the flipped classroom has been mostly positive in research; however, it is unclear whether students actually note and/or value the change in the role of the instructor in the flipped classroom. This study sought to evaluate the perception of the ideal instructor according to students following their experience in a flipped classroom course. Data were collected on students’ perceptions of the instructor prior to, during, and following a flipped classroom experience. Overall, students valued the instructor’s role as a moderator rather than information-deliverer; however, the most important aspect of the flipped classroom, according to the students in this study, was the ability of the flipped classroom to foster greater interaction and learning between students.

Although the support provided by social relationships may be essential to a successful student transition, the transition to postgraduate study has had little consideration from a social support perspective. The study described in this article investigated the role played by social support in postgraduate taught students’ adjustment to university, and how social media contributes to this support. Thematic analysis indicated that participants benefitted most from specialised support from peers dealing with similar academic challenges. Facebook groups showed potential as a platform for building supportive peer networks. However, the heightened visibility of communications on this platform led some participants towards Facebook Messenger as a medium for peer contact. The study suggested that, in order to meet postgraduates’ needs, institutions could ensure postgraduate students have sufficient opportunity for collaboration within their cohorts. In addition, while social media may aid this process, students’ individual communication preferences may inevitably influence their engagement with particular platforms.