Making Active Learning Work with the Tools You Already Have

The biggest myth about active learning is that it has to be loud, complicated, or exhausting. We sit down with Bethany, a director of instructional support and training, to get clear on what active learning actually means.

We talk about why this approach can feel jarring for students who are used to lectures, and how a simple explanation of the “why” changes everything. Active learning is not about adding busy work. It is about tighter alignment to learning objectives, more formative assessment, and a better feedback loop so we can catch confusion early instead of discovering it weeks later through grading.

Then we get practical with educational technology and instructional design. We explore how tools like WooClap and Padlet can give every student a voice, support anonymous responses when needed, and make participation more inclusive for introverted students or multilingual learners. We also dig into translating active learning to online learning and asynchronous courses, including how to build real student to student interaction.

If this conversation helps, subscribe and share the episode with a colleague What is one small change you want to try next?

Transcript

Welcome And Why Active Learning

Host 0:29

Hello everyone. Today I have with me Bethany Smith. Bethany is the director of instructional support and training at DELTA here at NC State. Here, she leads faculty development, instructional technology support, and strategic teaching initiatives. With over twenty years of experience in higher education, she specializes in helping faculty effectively integrate technology to enhance student learning. She has lead enterprise-wide training programs, supported large scale transitions to online learning, and advanced course quality initiatives across the university. Bethany is an active leader in the higher education community, and a frequent presenter on faculty development, digital learning, and instructional innovation. Without further ado, thank you Bethany for being here!

Bethany 0:52

Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited that we could do this. I am a huge fan of podcasts and of you.

Host 1:00

Thank you.

Bethany 1:00

So I am the director of instructional support and training here at Delta. So there are a couple different groups underneath the IST unit. So really, I think, you know, it all comes down to what are the goals that faculty have, what are their pedagogical goals, what do they want to do with students, and then how do we help match the technology and the activities and the pedagogical strategies, or sometimes androgy, to help support them in what it is they're trying to do. So I really think of us as a partner, right? Like we can help showcase this tool is good for this thing in this instance when you're trying to do that. I don't think we would ever want any faculty member to use every single tool that we have.

Host 1:44

Right.

Bethany 1:45

Right? Like that would be way too much. Please don't. Please don't. But helping faculty pick and choose what tools will help them the most is really where I think we could help faculty really teach the best way that they can.

Supporting Faculty With Purposeful Tools

Host 1:59

And I think it's really awesome that within Delta, if you have experience working with Delta, you know that not all of our teams are front-facing teams where they have actual communication with faculty on an almost daily basis. But I feel like your team especially is a very front-facing team in which we talk to and help faculty almost exclusively as our role. So I think it's really cool just thinking about how that connects to what we're discussing and the fact that the things that you do in your role directly impact the faculty here on campus and at other institutions. So let's talk a little bit about active learning before we actually get into kind of defining it. I do want to kind of think about what drew you for, because you're kind of the point person for active learning, especially before I started focusing on it. If there was an active learning workshop or you were doing a panel, it was Bethany doing it. And so what kind of drew you to that? And how is it different from other instructional strategies, which you know we all support?

Bethany 3:07

So, I mean, I think for me, it goes back to the fact that I was trained to be a high school teacher, right? So I was trained to be a technology education teacher. And so a lot of my training and coursework had a lot to do with pedagogy and lesson planning. All those sorts of different things. And I don't, I'm trying to remember if we called it active learning.

Host 3:30

I don't think we did. That was a very new term to me.

Bethany 3:33

Right. It's like teaching, right? Like we, you know, I think one of the things I think that I really picked out in technology education was this idea of direct instruction has a place, but then your students have to do it, and then they have to transfer those skills to do something else, right? So in my mind, we I was really big on direct instruction, which could be lecture, which could be a reading, which could be some sort of background, you know, information. And then that guided practice where we might all do the same thing together so that we felt confident in something, and then independent practice where they had to take those skills and apply it on their own, right? And I think that served as a really good foundation for me in thinking about like getting students involved in their learning. Cause I think that when we get to the definition of active learning, I really think it's all about students taking an active role in what it is that they are learning to do, right? So they're no longer being the bucket to be filled, right? They're they're part of the process. And how do you help students become part of that process is really, I think, what's at the heart of active learning.

What Active Learning Really Means

Host 4:46

Yeah. And I mean, let's get into it. So I did a presentation at Moodle Exchange where I was mostly talking about Padlet, but it was talking about active learning with that tool. And I had defined it as students aren't just doing something, they're doing something with their learning. And it was really nice to kind of make that differentiation finally, because I think the word active throws us off. Like, oh, my students need to be talking. Oh, they need to be in groups. Oh, I have to have them doing, you know, multi-step things with other students in the course. And while those are strategies that you can use to achieve active learning, I think sometimes we can think that it's this big hurdle to jump and this big hoop to go through. And it doesn't always have to be that way. And it doesn't always have to be these large collaborative, you know, instances in your courses, especially because that may feel very unattainable to you, especially if you teach a fully online course. So let's get into it outside of what you mentioned. How would you define it and how would you make it seem as if something that's not this huge hurdle?

Bethany 5:55

Right. So I think it's always about it's very student focused, right? So it's putting the student at the focus of what it is that you're doing, right? It's not about you as an instructor or faculty member pontificating, right? It's really about how do I get students involved in this process. And I think a lot of our, you know, STEM fields have known this for a long time because there's been a hands-on lab, right, that's always been a part of it. There's been a lecture and a lab component. Well, you know, what if you could take some of those components of the lab and maybe put them in your lecture a little bit, right? Not a full chemistry lab where we're going through that, but some of the inquiry, some of that like discovery, like some of that trying to make prior connections with things. What if you could, you kind of hope your students are doing that when you're lecturing or when you're during direct instruction, but you have no idea if they actually are.

Host 6:51

Yeah, there's no way to test it.

Bethany 6:53

There's no way, right? So some of what I really like about active learning as an instructor is it gives me that feedback, right? So, you know, I have definitely been in that teaching situation where I am teaching to the front row and the front row is nodding and they're answering my questions, and I feel amazing. And then all of a sudden I realize, oh, 90% of my class is checked out. They're not a part of it, they don't get it, right? So when I think about active learning, I think about, oh, like how do I get everybody a part of this? How do I make it inclusive for all of my class? But at the same time, how do I get that feedback loop to make sure that I'm actually going in the right direction? And I know that's not necessarily a big part of active learning in terms of that. I don't the how important the feedback loop is, right? But I think that's a great entry point for a faculty member, right? To be able to see, like, oh, yes, my students are doing this, but I can use technology to kind of capture that in an easy way to make sure I'm going in the right direction so that I'm not finding out two weeks later by grading their homework that they missed this one thing and now everything's off, right? I can find that out in the classroom at the time and I can self-correct and I can be like, oh, they're not getting this part. I'm gonna start working on this right now.

Host 8:18

Right. And even though I feel like it's not necessarily an official component of it, it does kind of set up a good why, because I think that that's the next question that a lot of people have, especially students, because I know that before we recorded, we talked about the fact that students are not always gonna like active learning. I'm definitely that student who cannot handle a lot of change. And so if we're gonna have to get up and do something or I'm gonna have to like actually apply my learning and I expected a lecture, I'm gonna be like, what in the world is going on? But setting up a why and being able to explain that why, I think makes it meaningful. So if I know that I'm going to be getting some feedback on my instruction through this process, and my students know that they're gonna actually be applying their learning and it's gonna help them when they actually have to do what it is that I'm teaching them to do, it does kind of set up a good framework for engagement in it and you know, that kind of buy-in, you know? So I think that even though it's not official, it's not like in that definition, I think it is important.

Bethany 9:23

Yeah, I think that you know, the why is so important for all of our students, right? And for learning in general, you know, you hear students talk about, oh, well, that's busy work. Like you should never have busy work in a college class. I don't think you should have busy work in any class. No. But so many students are like, oh, well, this is just busy work. And it's like, no, this was purposefully done in your course for this reason. But if they don't know that, right, if they're not connecting it for the objectives and they're not seeing that, oh, so this is something that's gonna connect to help me on this exam later on, or what the purpose of something is, I think that that is crucial no matter what you do, but super crucial with active learning, because we have so many students that are great students and they've been doing really well. And then all of a sudden they get to college and one, they might not do as well. And so that's that's a huge like step back. And then two, all of a sudden they're having to do different things than what they expected. Like, like you just mentioned, right? They're like, well, this is how I learn. It's like, well, really? Maybe like let's talk about these other ways and what this could look like and how we could do these things. But it's for students, especially I think students that are high achieving students, yes, that have high achieved in certain circumstances, changing that up in any way, whether we're talking about a flip classroom, high flex, active learning classroom, any of those sorts of different ways is really always going to be jarring.

Host 10:59

Yes.

Bethany 11:00

And we have to guide students through that to help them figure out like, why is this actually a good thing? And it it might be hard.

Feedback Loops And Student Buy In

Host 11:11

Yeah, that's what I mean. Like that's exactly how I have always been. I learn best by note-taking, I learn best by listening and digesting for myself. But is that gonna help me in my role when I actually graduate? So I think that it is a good thing, but you have to definitely have that why behind it. And I think that it has been time, but it is a good time for us to get out of just saying do this because I said do it, but actually giving that background as to what the purpose of it is. And it is important for everybody, especially adult learners. So I know that we have talked a little bit about what is it as a whole, but we focus on digital tools here. And so I think it's really important to start bringing that into the conversation. So, what makes digital tools effective for this type of work for active learning? And how do we make it something that's meaningful and not just this flashy thing that we added to our course that we think is really cool?

Bethany 12:15

Um, yeah, I think I always refer to that as edutainment. Yes, right, r ather than something that's actually educational. I think, you know, one of the things that I love about digital tools in this sort of circumstance is how it allows everybody to have a voice. So when I was showing my example earlier, you know, talking to that front row, there are a lot of people in your classroom that do not want to raise their hand. But they have something they actually want to contribute, but there's lots of different reasons why they might not raise their hand. Some of those reasons might be they just need to think through what their answer is first, right? They're not gonna be like me and just spout out the first thing that comes out of their mind, whether it's correct or not, right? They wanna thoughtfully think about that. Maybe, you know, English is not their first language, right? So they're having to do some translation in their head. Maybe they feel very introverted and shy, and that's just not something. So one of the things that I love is to use some of these tools, and whether it's Padlet, right? Whether it's, I used to have my students do a discussion forum before they showed up to class, right? To be able to do some pre-work or maybe even in class, we're gonna post the discussion forum so that every person would have an opportunity to contribute to the conversation. And that allowed for everyone to have a voice, but it also allowed for me to check to make sure we were all on the same page. So it did that double duty that we were talking about. It gave me a feedback loop to be able to see those things. And I think a lot of these sorts of different tools, it allows for both of those things, right? It allows for everyone to equally contribute, whether it's in WooClap in a poll or in an open-ended question, so that they feel valued, right? And they and it's like, oh, I really have to think about this and what this answer is. Possibly you could even grade it, right? Like you could think about this is how I take attendance in my class, this is how I add another point to think about that process. Or it could just be being part of it, could contributing and thinking is part of the process, and that's what's important, especially in some of our larger classes, right? Like that can be a really crucial way that we find out how everybody is doing in the class and how to give voice to everyone. So I think that's what I really like about digital tools. I also think they're really great if you want to do anonymous, right? So you're talking about something that's, you know, we talked about it in large classes, but you know, what if you have a small class, right? Yeah. What if you had it be anonymous, right? In WooClap so that students were able to contribute on maybe a controversial issue that they don't feel comfortable saying, "this is how I really feel about something."

Host 14:59

Or even just being in a small class and knowing that somebody's gonna know exactly who said that. Like it can be overwhelming to want to share in a smaller space like that, too, even if it's not something controversial, even if it's just a discussion and you're that shy person who's like, I know that when I post, everybody's gonna be like, oh, that was her, because it's only five of us or 12 of us in this room. And so, you know, so I think even that is important. And I think we don't think about it in both ways all the time. But yes, absolutely.

Digital Tools That Give Everyone Voice

Bethany 15:34

Yeah, I think I took a great class once or workshop that was about extroverts teaching introverts. I'm very extroverted person and I do enjoy teaching and I do enjoy lecturing. Like I like presenting, I like doing that. I can see how easily I could get sucked into doing that for a really long period of time. And I think that workshop really helps me think about oh, other people are not like me and wanting to sit on the front row and wanting to raise their hand and wanting to have that discussion. And I realized that really what I was doing when I was doing that was having a discussion with the faculty member, right? Like I was just having that, and nobody else was a part of it or got to be a part of that discussion. That was how I learned, right? And I think it's so important for instructors to think about well, maybe this is how I learned, but that's not how everybody learns. And that's that was really, I think, very monumental shift for me to think about how do I make sure that I always give space for others. And maybe that's and that goes, you know, into meetings and how we plan things and how we do other things. But I think especially when it comes to active learning, because it's so focused on students' participation, how can you make sure that everybody has that opportunity?

Host 16:55

Right. And that can be challenging in multiple different, I think, contexts. So that kind of leads into our next question. Where do you see them making the biggest difference when it comes to these face-to-face or these hybrid courses where there's actually people in a room together at some point in this course? And how do you kind of see that shift happening with digital tools when you're all there together?

Bethany 17:21

Right. So I think the the biggest thing can be so we've we've talked about that equal participation, but I think it's also this idea of, okay, we need individuals to be part of that activity or discussion. And then talk about how important is that sharing back out aspect of it, right? Like, is it because you can do think-pair without the share, right? Like, like what is thinking about what is important about the share part. And I think digital tools can help you think about all right, well, is that share part important for the whole groups that we're all on the same page? So do I want every group to say, answer a WooClap question to make sure that we're all going in the same direction? And that everybody else, there's a little bit of peer pressure, right? Did everybody else get the same answer? Are we all, I mean, you could see this in a physics class, right? Where everybody's, you know, doing a working on a problem, talking over to their neighbor, yeah, is this what you got? Is this what I got? Yes. All right, we're gonna vote together in Wooclap, see where we all are, and then an instructor can use that as an opportunity to redo something, or it could just be like, yeah, we got it. And but I the the activity of me doing that at my desk, answering the question, and then talking to somebody about it is really important.

Host 18:45

Yeah. Right. Especially because you kind of get that internal satisfaction too when you're like, oh, somebody else was thinking like I was thinking. Right. And sometimes that can be extremely helpful. And as a student, I personally enjoy when I feel like I'm on the right track. And how else would I know that if there was never a check?

Bethany 19:05

Right, right. Like if you're it's validating. Like I get really frustrated with classes that only have a midterm and a final exam. Like how, how am I ever supposed to know if I'm going in the right direction? And then when I find out I have no other choice, right? Like I'm kind of stuck. Yeah. I can't course correct as much as I want to. I think that becomes really, really important to give students multiple opportunities to be able to show their knowledge and to show their growth and to show where they're going through. And I think that using technology to do that in an in-person class, instead of just a quiz, right? Like, you know, not just doing knowledge checks, but doing that formative assessment. So assessment for learning versus assessment of learning. Like, what are some ways that they can be a part of this and learn rather than just homework and quizzes? What are some other things that we can add into that?

Host 19:59

Right. So on that same side, I think that I've been missing that whole, well, I wonder what other people are thinking because I primarily take online courses now because I'm a graduate student. And so, you know, I know that online learning has been kind of a thing for a long time. Like this is not a new concept, but I think that after the COVID-19 pandemic and a lot of things being fully online, it has become maybe not a larger thing, but a very much more accepted form of education, where now a lot of courses are totally fine being fully online. But then that kind of brings up this question of how are we ensuring that you're still getting that same feel that you get in that in-person or hybrid course in an online environment. And how are digital tools helping to achieve that in a way that we probably have not always been able to do?

Bethany 20:56

Yeah, I think so, multiple layers to that question. So, first, I think one thing that we need to acknowledge at NC State is that their undergraduate students take online classes. So, yes, we only have one online program as undergraduate, but a lot of students take online classes, and that has to do with schedule conflicts, right? And fitting things in. And so I think, you know, it's not just graduate students, even though we have a lot of online programs, and we a lot of graduate students are in online programs, we do have a lot of our undergraduate students taking these online classes as well. And a lot of times it's an equivalency, right? Like the class is offered in-person and offered online. And you get to choose based on what you're doing. So then I think it's even more important that if you're doing active learning in this in-person one, like how do you translate that into your online one? I think COVID really helped with the skills of our instructors. Like it kind of jump started them to see, oh, there are some things I could actually do. And these actually worked in a way that I was not expecting. And I was really proud of our faculty because one of the things that they had to learn how to be during COVID was really flexible.

Host 22:16

Yes. And you were forced into it. You had no choice.

Better Participation In Live Classes

Bethany 22:20

And well, not only that, but you had to be flexible with like attendance and assignments, right? Like, you know, normally, you know, we have an attendance policy, right? Well, you can't do that if somebody's going to be sick for three weeks. So it was, it was a lot of work on faculty to try to figure out how do I do this course, basically redesign an entire course in a couple weeks, and at the same time be flexible and not go into a grading spiral. Like it was really, it was stressful. It was really stressful. But I think one of the things that's come out of that that I've seen more and more faculty do is take something, oh, this actually worked really well online, or this project worked really well instead of doing an exam. And now I'm going to keep doing that. And I think those are kind of the things that I'm most proud of, right? That they're like, all right, they took that and they learned something and they moved on rather than saying, oh my gosh, this was a horrible experience. I'm never going to do this again. I'm going back to this. It's like, no, like a lot of people really started to love the Zoom whiteboard. Or the Zoom polling features. And they were like, oh, this was really great. And, you know, I even had somebody talking the other day, like, oh yeah, we should rather do this in Zoom rather than in a meeting so that everybody has the opportunity to chat, right? To do this. And it was like, oh, it's so I can't keep, you know, we have all of those tools. You can do that in person. It doesn't have to be in Zoom to take advantage of those. But I think, I think though those are some great ways that people are like, oh, okay. Because when we think about synchronous, right, that that's kind of easier to translate, right? Like, oh, I did a poll in class, I can do a poll in Zoom or vice versa. I do breakout rooms in Zoom because I do discussion groups in person, right? And so I think those are easier. But then we think about, all right, well, then how do I take this asynchronous, right? When I know that. And one of the things that we always look at is when we look at quality courses, and we do use several different ways to look at that. Like we look at quality matters, we look at the OLC scorecard, you know, a lot of it's looking at what are the different types of interaction in your course, right? So we're looking at instructor to student interaction, student to content, and then student to student, right? And then how do we encourage that in a class? And so I think when I when you think about the activities in your class, how do you encourage student to student? What are some of those ways that we can have students interact with each other and maybe even interact with the content at the same time?

Host 24:53

Which happens a lot in an online course. You're mainly interacting with the content, and then you can add in some of that student to student if there's opportunities for it. But that's a lot of it.

Bethany 25:04

So this kind of reminds me of when I was teaching a class and it was not going well, right? Like my students were not engaging in the discussions. Like I really thought I was giving great discussion questions in the small group, and then they weren't talking or they weren't talking on topic, and it was just really, really frustrating. And so I had to rethink all right, how how am I going to do this with this class so that I kind of make them discuss the way that I want them to? And I realized that I had been getting away with it because the group of students I had had before were just like they were engaged in the topic, and that was something they were interested in. But at this class, for whatever reason, and there's always going to be a class that happens, right?

Host 25:45

I mean, you're not always going to get the same students every single time. I think that's just the nature of teaching. But it's harder at a higher level because you don't have the ability to really get to know sometimes every single student in your course. Whereas, like if you're teaching like elementary school and you have 18 kids and you have them for the entire year, then you can really start to, you know, like tailor things to those specific students, but it's different, right?

Bethany 26:11

And and a lot of times you have students from different programs, right? Right. So it's not like you know, you've even had a relationship with them in some other courses or anything. And so I had to really think about okay, how do I get my students to contribute? And what I realized was is that they weren't pulling from their own experience. And I'm like, okay, so I started looking into specific discussion techniques, right? So we looked into like the hat method, right? So every person has to represent something different in our discussion. So since I was in education, one person would be a teacher, one person would be a principal, one person would be a parent, one person would be a stakeholder. And then they would discuss the issues. And they weren't discussing it from their point of view. They were discussing it from the point of view of this person. Or maybe we did at Jigsaw, right? Where students all read in groups of four, read different articles, and then we would mix up the groups. There was one person that had read each article, and then they talked about their article. So it wasn't a discussion about each article, it was about the topic. I had to make sure that I pulled articles that had different perspectives and different viewpoints so that they could do those things. And those are all active learning strategies. And I think about how important that is to think about online.

Host 27:29

Yes.

Bethany 27:29

Like if I had just asked a question and I'm expecting only one answer, that's a knowledge check.

Host 27:36

Yes.

Bethany 27:36

Right. That is not a discussion.

Host 27:39

And you can't really interact with that.

Making Online Courses Truly Interactive

Bethany 27:42

No, because everybody's going to say I agree. Like, no, you have to think about okay, how do I create a question that actually does discussion? A great faculty member that I worked with would, they were really lucky. They had like, all right, here's this law case. Was justice served? Come to consensus. Like, oh, so there could be other viewpoints, right? Or maybe even doing a debate and saying, you think this side of the case got served justice, you think this case did not, discuss. Like I think though thinking of some of those sorts of different ways. And then we can start to think about, okay, how can technology help facilitate that better? So maybe it's okay, I want them to interact with the content through something like Perusal. And then we get to a crucial point. And I want to ask a question that says, Well, what do you think about this? Like, what does this mean for you in your context? Or take this viewpoint and do these things. So thinking about structuring really good discussion questions, and then how do I implement those in these tools? Maybe it's a VoiceThread, right? Where students are getting an opportunity to share. And VoiceThread I really like because it allows students to share. Do I share with voice? Do I share with text? Do I share with video? Like I have lots of opportunities.

Host 29:06

You have the option.

Bethany 29:06

And you can do threaded discussions.

Host 29:09

Yes, very fancy.

Bethany 29:10

You can, you know, I love putting just pictures in VoiceThread and saying, what does this picture say to you? What what is what does this picture evoke in you?

Host 29:20

And you know what I love about this is the fact that it is inviting perspectives from different people. And I think that that is one of the things that I value the most as a student taking a course is the fact that I see things through a specific lens. I used to be a teacher, I now work in digital tools and instructional media. And it is something that I can see things a specific way. But I have colleagues who work in the military and do training there, or have colleagues who teach in higher education, or colleagues who teach completely corporate and just do training for corporate companies. And so all of our various perspectives come together and I'm able to see how different people see different things. And so I think any situation, especially we're talking about discussion boards or just trying to bring student thoughts in, I think that it also tells your students that you value their differences and their perspectives on what it is that you're teaching, but it's still focused on what you're teaching and the learning that's supposed to be taking place, but you're still inviting that personal kind of experience into the process as well. And I love that.

Bethany 30:34

Yeah. And we have to remember that we have we have a lot of non-traditional students on our campus and undergraduate, our graduate student age range is very vast. They've got this vast different experience that they've brought with them. It's important to have that be part of the discussion. It brings something important to that discussion. Even if it's just, you know, even in my class, having students be like, oh, well, we've had laptops since I was in sixth grade. And I've had laptops the whole time through my education. So this is my experience with instructional technology. To the students, it's like, oh, we never did anything online. We never had good internet at my school. So we never did any of those things. And it's like, oh, you have such different viewpoints as to what technology is. That's in my perspective, it's like, oh, okay. So how do we, how do we talk about that? How do we deal with that? Because it's not, I think one thing I can always say is technology is not always the answer. But when we're thinking about these online asynchronous classes, it's the answer that's facilitating the ability for so many students to be able to take these classes. And it shouldn't be a correspondence course. There should be interaction that's part of that. And how do you build that interaction with your small or large courses online?

Host 31:57

Right. And I think that that's that leads into just a comment I've thought about before we started recording. And that's the fact that, you know, having a background in teaching, it can be easy to say, oh, just use this strategy or just use that strategy, or this strategy is a go-to. But if you don't have a background in teaching, then that's not something that comes natural to you. If you don't have a background in technology or using digital tools, it can be a huge learning curve to invite those things into a course for students who have not had any experience with that. And so I think that this is the perfect time to kind of talk about for one, if an instructor wants to try this out and keeping all of those things in mind, what is a very easy way to just go about it? And what is probably a very easy to use tool that you have seen faculty use successfully in order to achieve this without having to really reinvent the wheel or try to learn all of these different tools that could probably help some of our faculty out who really want to try, but just do not want like all that at the top. They want that low-hanging fruit.

Bethany 33:08

Right, right, right. Well, I think the first thing is is just pick one thing. Like don't pick everything, right? So, and I always like to talk to faculty about like, okay, so what are some of the things that somebody struggles with in your class? What are what are some of what are some of the pain points in your class, right? Like, and then what can we do to help alleviate that? And so thinking about, oh, okay, well, would having, you know, using a tool like WooClap to ask a question in class, is that something that, okay, so that that that might be like the lowest hanging, right? Like like students working on a problem, thinking of something and putting it in WooClap. What if we step that up, right? And it's like, okay, they they do that, they talk to the person next to them and then they group put it in. What if that's something? What if, you know, you rearrange some things, give different groups different questions? What if we go through those sorts of different things? I think thinking through some easy things to be able to do can help you figure out, oh, I want to go bigger with this. Or this is good, right? Which is okay. Which is totally okay, right? Or it's like, oh, this is good. I'm gonna set it up so that my students know when they come into class, we're gonna have an entrance ticket, right? There's a question on the board, and they're gonna answer that in WooClap before they see anybody else's answers. And then they can like other people's, well, we're starting to get this. Or maybe it's an exit ticket instead, right? Where before they leave, they have to answer this question. And maybe one of the questions is what's something you're still confused about? What's something you don't know something about? Some of those are very traditional strategies that have been done in paper and pen for a long time. But if we add that technology aspect, it's easier for you to tabulate them to be able to get that.

Start Small With One Easy Change

Host 34:57

And keep track of them because I remember cutting off like little strips of paper for exit tickets and like trying to keep a hold of all of them. And so I think that's the one of the things I'm most excited about when it comes to digital tools is the fact that you can keep it. And there are clouds and there are libraries that hold all of this good information, and you don't have to try to like keep track of it in any kind of way because it's there. You can always refer back to and you can always bring it back up for your students.

Bethany 35:24

Or even, I mean, one of my favorite things to do in WooClap is to have do an open-ended question and then do the word cloud. And it's like it automatically addresses all of the themes. It's like, oh, so this was the main theme that came out of this without it being multiple choice. It does that, you know, almost qualitative data analysis for you to show these are the rising themes that you've got going on. Now, do you want to have that discussion? So I think it is important to kind of think about all right, what are the pain points? And then what is that easy tool that I can do that?

Host 35:54

I do like the fact that there's not this like stigma that you have to use like perusal and voice thread. Even though those tools are fantastic and you can totally use them, I do like the fact that there are some Moodle tools that you can use. And forms are not the bad guy. It's about how you use it and how you go about making shorts meaningful. And I think one of the most important things that came out of this conversation today is the fact that active learning doesn't have to be hard, but it does have to be purposeful. So I do love that, you know, we've kind of given some of that low-hanging fruit so that instructors know that there's there is a way to do it and it is okay to start at whatever level you feel comfortable starting with. So as we're moving towards the end now, I do kind of want to give a little bit of encouragement, especially from you and just having all the experience you have based on just this conversation today and our listeners. What is one small shift that you hope instructors will consider when it comes to doing active learning with digital tools?

Bethany 36:54

I think I'm really just hoping that that faculty and instructors think about how do you get students involved in their learning, right? Like that learning is not filling a bucket, right? You're not just pouring knowledge into this person. They actually need to be an active participant in it. And how do how do we get that to happen? And what are some of those different ways that you can get that to happen to have them be an active participant? And that's going to look different in different fields and different class sizes and all sorts of different things. But the the important thing is, you know, and actually it kind of comes down to motivation. Like how do you motivate students to take an active part in their learning?

Host 37:36

It's connected to so many different things. I mean, when we talk about active learning, we're talking about student engagement, we're talking about student motivation, we're talking about, you know, the purpose of it, the why behind it all, and that leads to learning objectives and course objectives and all of those different types of things, application of learning. So I think that is a really important thing to say. Last but not least, because you have a larger picture and you also get to work with so many amazing institutions, what are you excited to see when it comes to active learning?

What Is Next For Active Learning

Bethany 38:10

Yeah, I think, so we haven't really touched on active learning classrooms at all, which is crazy. But that has a lot to do with the fact, I think at our campus, you know, nobody really owns active learning classrooms. Like we're all kind of working on it. And I truly do believe that active learning can happen in any classroom. But sometimes the classroom can be a barrier, right? Fixed lecture hall seating can be really difficult to do small group work. Like it's doable, but it's not easy. And so I really love seeing some of the different classroom innovations that are happening that allow for large classrooms to be in small groups and then come back to the larger class and then go have that back and forth to allow for some of that small group work that can happen. That's come a really long way. Right. I think some of the other things that I'm excited about are that we're kind of throwing some of these things and twisting them on their head, right? So Yellow Dig is a great example for that, right? Like I maybe we need to rethink forums altogether, right? Right. And throw out the way that we've traditionally done forums and start anew. And I think Yellow Dig really does that. And it's all about student-centered. What do they want to talk about in a class? What motivates them? How are they having those sorts of discussions? So I think in both of those environments, it's still about the student, right? But it's what are some ways that we can make that easier for them to engage, and whether that's because of the way a physical classroom is laid out or because the way a digital classroom is laid out.

Host 39:42

Well, I really love the connection to, you know, what's traditionally done and then where we're going in the future. I think that I can already see a shift, even from instructors who enjoy that traditional sense. I think, you know, especially being on the front lines and being able to have consultations with faculty members, there really is a desire to transition the way that they're teaching into a more active and engaged way. And even if that's just one thing that they're changing. So I do love that we got to have this conversation and faculty get to have, you know, a little bit of insight into what it really means and what are some of those easy things that they can do to achieve it. So I just want to say thank you so much for sitting down with me and having this amazing conversation. It has actually been so, so amazing to just kind of, you know, get into your brain a little bit.

Bethany 40:32

I know this was absolutely great.