Course Evaluations and Active Learning

As faculty and instructors, one of the most disheartening experiences is to feel as though you've done everything you can to center student learning in the classroom and mentor students outside of the classroom, only to receive reviews that say:

"didn't learn anything"

"professor made us teach ourselves"

"expect to have to talk a lot"

Student perspectives are an essential part of student-centered learning. Still, a challenge with the course evaluation system is that faculty are not always empowered to appropriately contextualize their classroom instruction.

As Deslauriers, McCarty, Miller, and Kestin (2019) suggest "students in the active classroom learn more, but they feel like they learn less." Deslauriers, et. al. claims are echoed by Shekhar, et. al. (2020). As they identified in their systematic review of 57 published studies on negative student responses to active learning, negative student responses can be grouped into a few major themes.

^{Reasons Behind Negative Response - from Shekhar, et. al. (2020)}
^Category	^{Reason Behind Codes}	^{Overall Frequency}
^{Perception of limited value}	^{Students did not appreciate the value of AL in helping them learn, achieve course learning outcomes, cover course content, get a good grade in exams/course, or enhance interest in the topic}	³¹
^{Lack of time, difficulty, and increased workload}	^{Students complained that AL activities were time-consuming, were difficult to complete, and increased their workload.}	¹⁹
^{Lack of guidance}	^{Students were concerned about limited guidance, lack of scaffolding, a low degree of instructor involvement, and self-directed learning.}	¹⁵
^{Logistical difficulties}	^{Students were concerned regarding the technology/instrument/tools used in AL, classroom features such as layout and class size, scheduling conflicts, group/team work, and the quality of videos used in the flipped classroom setting.}	¹²
^{Unfamiliarity with AL}	^{Students were not used to AL and perhaps were expecting to sit in a lecture.}	⁵
^{Lack of student preparation and confidence}	^{Students were unprepared to do the activities due to insufficient background knowledge or lack of review material.}	⁵

We can take away from these themes a few useful strategies:

1. Explanation: "Explaining how the activities relate to learning, as well as carefully planning activities that align with graded assignments" can help to address students' concern over the utility of the course or activity.

Moreover, "communication of overall course expectations for student participation at the beginning of the semester is one way for mitigating negative response due to mismatch in student expectations." (Shekhar, et. al., 2020)

2. Facilitation: "Facilitation strategies include monitoring students during an activity, carefully planning activities, aligning assessment with activities, and seeking feedback from students about the activities."

To best address student disengagement or discouragement, instructors can apply "facilitation strategies of carefully planning and scaffolding activities that guide students in their learning." (Shekhar, et. al., 2020)

For further support with student-centered and active learning, visit the Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CETLA) at Howard University.

Student-centered learning is most successful when students clearly understand the reasoning behind the course instruction and feel supported in the process. Seeking out student feedback prior to end-of-semester course evaluations is an effective way to center student needs and ensure effectiveness.

The Assessment team in IRA can support you in creating or implementing any assessment or evaluation strategies instructors may want to try out. Reach out to us at assessment@howard.edu.

Pavithra Suresh, 2023.