Active Learning Techniques Influence on Students' Perception

Education has marked by the government in advancing the nation. People see education as an important role in offering their country the future, they put hope in terms of changing a better social life. Education alone is not enough for this community’s expectancy, the instructor and student must involve in the classroom process to increase better learning outcomes. From my personal experience and discussion with 20 (twenty) instructors and 90 (ninety) art students, indicated various active learning techniques between instructor-student and student-student impact several learning outcomes. In a small experiment, applied an active learning methodology approach in class, could gain knowledge from the student’s depth of learning and assist the instructor in their educational goals.

This post was written by our TEFL certification graduate Mariati Y. Please note that this blog post might not necessarily represent the beliefs or opinions of ITTT.

The methods of approach conducted in two courses with interactive lecture and group discussion.

Interactive Lecture

In a typical college classroom, lecturing process consists of instructor verbally communicating information to the students, and students passively receiving and encoding it into their memories. Mostly, a learner in Indonesia is designed to sit still and receive information. Previous responses have indicated that students feel passive lecture in theory class is mundane and espouses a vocabulary of which they are unfamiliar. While instructors facing some similar challenges that show most students tend to less responsive, awkward and influenced the instructor’s mood in teaching.

To maximize the learning efficiency and acceptable teaching styles, through the experiment, the instructor used interactive cues such as:

• Link the material to a personal story and prompting students to share their own.
• Use media (video, sounds, object, visual) to keep student-focused and engaged.
• Using simple and clear sentences to interpreting theoretical framework.
• Stay positive and good energy in giving the lecture.

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The result from an evaluation of student’s responses are:

• Less intimidating yet interesting.
• Feel relax, fun, and happy.
• Inspired and would like to learn more.

An interactive lecture style triggers engagement between instructor and student, and emotionally increased student participation in learning.

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Group Discussion

In my experiences, students are generally comfortable and happy with their selected group members. This allows them to get to work with their friends and less pressure. However, through the experiment, the instructor mixed the group members 4 (four) times through 4 (four) different tasks. In the first task, the instructor randomly chooses the group members from their ID’s number. After reviewed from their score, the instructor paired the smart student with the less intelligent student in the next task. The purpose of the mixed group is to avoid judgemental attitudes based on student’s learning ability, building better teamwork, and learning from each other. After those exercises been evaluated, the student’s responses are:

• Opportunity working and interacting with a variety of friends from a different culture.
• Encourage the whole class as teamwork and friends.
• Get motivated and learned from smarter students.
• Feeling empathy and helping each other in learning difficulties.

Though some of the objectives been met, the instructor found that mixed group members in understanding each other experiences and backgrounds could lead the students to feel empathy and show their support by helping each other.

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In summary, both active learning techniques involve direct communication between instructor-student and student-student, have their benefits and positively assist in the student’s acquisition of knowledge. Both methods, when applied, resulted in an elevation in overall scores for the students being evaluated. From a survey been given, the material delivered in video and presentation led to the highest results than other techniques. In contrast, ninety art students from theory class recorded ‘interactive lecture’ leaves the best impression during their learning process. The success of the interactive lecture method, generates student’s motivation in learning, building an active and communicative atmosphere, and deepens student’s understanding and long-term recall.

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