As for the rest of you – I am a librarian who also holds other graduate degrees and has been one with the snooty faculty. Don’t let them fool you, honestly, they are not gods in Olympia.

:P Thanks in advance. Hedwig.

Now naturally the students in the face-to-face classes will be the ones working on campus in research labs and truly pursuing higher education and getting the really good jobs. And the Passive students who can’t get internships or even in-class positions anymore will lay on their whine about how higher education is such an exclusive egghead club, too high and mighty and egotistical for a common person to join. I contend higher education really ISN’T for EVERYONE. Most people need to graduate and get out of school as soon as possible so they can just get on with life already – in short, going out and getting that dead end job they are going to whine about until they retire in 45 years!

I have had professors who were truly GOOD at lectures. Their leadership was bar none some of the best and their lectures were fun to attend. But then I had a lot of sleepers in there as well. I’m glad you recognize the main issue, as that makes this so much easier to discuss! The greatest difficulty at this moment in time is not the Active Learning teaching style itself but rather the entire educational system as it is currently rooted in the students, the professors, and even the traditional classrooms.

Traditional classrooms, for instance, are typically constructed of seats with built-in desks bolted to the floor, all facing the board. This is true whether the room was made for 30 students or 300 students and it is not just in education where you find this arrangement; you find it in most theaters as well. It turns out the most efficient packing method for any room is indeed the “auditorium” style setup.

We then examine the method of delivery: what is the most efficient way to convey the most information to the highest number of people and ensure they all receive a very similar message? In this case, it turns out that if you have a single person give the talk, you can cram the most information into that period of time. Furthermore, if that professor is given the full allotment on that time, we see that this is the single-most easiest way the professor can throw the information at the students – even if it is painting the wall red by throwing strawberries at it and hoping the strawberries stick!

And we finally look at the students. It turns out that the most efficient method for them to grasp is the “sit and spin” method; that is, they show up, sit down, and then spin themselves silly on their swivel chairs until the lecture ends. And that’s it. What student would NOT argue against this perfect solution?

But as we see, this mode merely plays to the laziest of all of us. The model does not encourage universities to pick only the brightest students; nay, you can pack as many into the room as humanly possible and reap Big money!! Professors like the model because they only have to prepare 15 to 18 fifty-minute lectures on the subject material, give three tests [or assign three papers], a final exam, perhaps a short paper and their work is DONE – even better if they have a couple TAs to do the Discussion groups and the grading of all assignments!! And the students…need I even mention the students, who aren’t even showing up and still passing with 3.0 grade point averages????!!! So now the revolution is here and it is actively happening…

There is indeed a real difficulty weaning people off of the Passive Learning Model. Like you stated, the biggest difficulty is how people have been Actively [!] engaged in the Passive Model for so very, very long, perhaps as long as first grade and Kindergarten. Our current teachers are ill-prepared for the new revolution because they have been submerged in the passive model themselves since the beginning of time. Thankfully classes are becoming increasingly unrestricted, although in some cases it has been pushed to the breaking limit of Absurdity; the classroom is now virtual and the students are all no where to be seen!

I do not think it is a bad idea to give students a large open-ended project like this; my Preservation professor did this very thing and I found it to be perfect. He did us one better, as this was a week long course; instead of forcing us to finish the paper by a specific set point, he gave us a year from the day he entered the grades to turn in the paper, as he had up until that point to change our grade of I in the computer to a real grade. Now when the rest of our traditional university professors figure this out [along with the students desiring more work in exchange for higher grades, we will see COMPLETE AND UTTER CHAOS in the university grading schematics.

I disagree with you that a large open-ended assignment is inappropriate at the beginning of the semester. A large project does indeed take that much time conceptually and mentally to do and do well. The project itself may be put together in less than a week or even three days; however, the research and thought that goes into the organization of that information needs time to crystallize into something cohesive.

You very cleanly introduced the way such a large project works: the first three or four weeks of class [the time before the proposal is due] depend on strong professor leadership to put wind in the sails of students, particularly those who have never even thought of education in this way before. The very first day of class might even be a really good day to do compare/contrast session of passive and active learning where one topic is taught using both methods within one class period so that students are aware of what is happening to them and thus not confused later. The first four weeks should cover sufficient material in a manner that every student has enough gray matter to make a research direction in the fifth week.

It is exciting to see the revolution in action within the universities at present. The Universities are in store for major changes as the community colleges are doing a VERY good job competing for students at this moment through distance education. The main problem for universities is that they are locked into the passive model and they have maxed it out in terms of the number of students in versus the amount of tuition dollars out of those student’s pockets. The Active Learning Model only really works well when the group sizes [3-4 people] and class sizes are small [under 20-30]. Groups with 5 plus people typically have at least one sleeper; classrooms with more than 30 students become cumbersome and difficult for one professor to handle. The good news is that Universities could start making more classes distance elements and then set all of the face-to-face classes up where students can only be admitted to the class by professor approval.

Now naturally the s

My instruction sessions never consist of me lecturing for extended periods of time. My sessions consist of a short period of instruction followed by either a group activity (based on solving a problem) or independent research for an assignment. I also go around the classroom to have discussions with every group or individual about their research.

I believe information literacy is mainly skill based and therefore I give students an safe learning environment to try out newly learned skills and to learn ways to overcome obstacles.

From working in the military and in various levels of education, I feel that teaching is also about leadership.

You are leading students in their academic development as well as contributing to their personal and professional development. From various leadership roles, I have learned that if your people know your expectations, if you set the example, and you respect and listen to your people, then they will follow you and do almost anything for you. You can set expectations high but you must give them the tools and opportunities for your people to succeed.

I don’t see how giving them an open assignment at the beginning of a semester will help them especially when other styles of learning (passive learning as you mentioned) have been catered to for several years as I witnessed in K-12 education. Instead it would be better to give them more direct assignments in the beginning of the semester and then lead them into the open assignment at the end (or better yet in the earlier years then moving on to more open assignments in the later years).

The assignments I changed were focused on library research. If you want to give students open assignments on library research when they have never used one of the library databases, then go ahead. But I am confident that most first year students walk out of my sessions with new skills, a few resources for their assignments or projects, and decrease in the level of anxiety in using library resources.

Finally, I don’t believe my way is the only way and am always seeking ways to improve my teaching.

The teaching model is called “Active Learning.” Professors want to move beyond the passive learning box and enable students to have very real control over even the most fundamental aspects of their projects.

The Active Learning model really does favor those students who have a genuine interest in the material. it allows them to go as far or as short as they need to go in order to do the assignment justice by the students’ own cognizance. It has been shown in a number of studies that students really do learn more and for a longer period of time when they are taught using the Active Learning Model – in essence, when they are actively pursuing the knowledge they are supposed to be learning!

The problem with Active Learning is that the majority of our students are Passive Students. They don’t Want to learn any more than the Bare Minimum. They WANT a very clear box that does 95% of the work for them so they can then rush off and do the assignment between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM the night before the assignment is due and get an A.

Passive students get very frustrated when the assignment resembles this:

Pick a topic in Art and do an research project, poster, paper or a presentation of some type on an aspect of this topic that fascinates you. This project is worth 40% of your final grade in this class.

The project is due on April 7th. Today is January 20th. You will have a project proposal due on February 20th on the class web interface turned in by 11:59 in which you describe your topic and your project. This proposal is worth 10% of your final grade in this class.

And That’s IT! That “proposal,” by the way, can be as little as three sentences on a sheet of paper. I’ve seen it, I’ve done it, and it really does work! It works because it shows the professor those students actually care about the class and deserve extra attention while weeding out those students who really couldn’t give a damn!

The place where you are stuck, I think, is that you are still hung up on the idea that instruction is professor dictated just as librarianship was once librarian dictated. The professor is supposed to stand at the front of the room and lecture the students; the students are supposed to take notes and pass the exams. But that model has proven that the knowledge only stays in heads until the exam and then quickly subsides back into the nether realms of the human existence.

Let us revisit that hypothetical assignment; I ask you to identify just how that assignment is frustrating; is it because you have too much freedom, you don’t know how to think independently, or is it because you have spent your whole life in one box and have grown to expect that everything will spoon-fed to you?

It should be obvious to students in the upper division university level what constitutes a serious research project. How long is a serious research paper? Open up a research Journal!! Papers are long enough to discuss the issue, of course!! How should it be written? Well, how else? Concise, organized, interesting, to the point, and without a whole lot of stuffing!! Should it have spelling and grammatical errors? Do I the professor actually have to tell you, the upper division undergraduate/ graduate student that your papers should NOT have many errors??? How should the work cited page be formatted? And do I need to tell you that the REAL purpose for a works cited section is so that someone else can find these sources and double check your analysis? Do I need to turn on the light bulb for you that it really doesn’t matter WHICH style [APA, MLA, etc.] you format your references, just so long as you do it in a manner that is clean, consistent and contains all the necessary information to FIND that article??? [Many PROFESSORS don’t even get this last one!!]

What should I do my paper on?? Do I the professor need to hold your hand while we walk through the subject material I have assigned to you, including the readings, the online notes, and the other aids to the materials, or are you capable of reading them yourself and coming to class ready to lead group discussions and class presentations on the material and just perhaps take charge of YOUR education? Do I need to remind you that at this point I have already done the research and I already know the information? Should I also remind you that my lectures are not a place where I get to show off my education, [Although MANY professors DO this!] but rather a place where you are supposed to come together with people who have similar interests to actually discuss the material?

Do I the professor even need to tell you what to research, especially when the course has a title and a syllabus with all this information in the title and the short synopsis describing the purpose of the course??

At what point do you become a real research student capable of doing your own research?

I’ll tell you this much more: professors are sick and tired of reading 150 papers on the same issue, especially when it is clear the majority of the assignments were written in the few wee hours before the assignment was due. There is a very good reason assignments have crumbled from twenty page research papers with every aspect defined to little short 5 page assignments and then the two and three page assignments I experienced in the last year of my undergraduate degree and then my masters. So professors got smart and rewrote the assignment to reflect the way the majority of the students felt about the assignments in the first place.

The Brilliance of this plan is how covertly this teaching style exposes the sluffers for who they are, and puts a very clear spotlight on those students who are actually engaged in the classroom.


“That’s Not Fair!” What’s not fair? I gave you an assignment with no boundaries; I gave you the PERFECT assignment that gave you every bit of freedom to show me just how serious you are as a University student about learning about this subject. You took that assignment and did diddlysquat. You had FOUR MONTHS! So now I am giving you a grade that reflects your performance of diddlysquat on this assignment. You wanted to do the bare minimum, and you did the bare minimum, and now you have a grade that reflects a student with the bare minimum level of knowledge. You should be happy, because in the old days your work would have earned an F instead of the C you so diligently earned.

Military Lib, nothing personal, just a rant; but I highly suggest you do a Google Search on “Active Learning Style” before you restructure

Great to see someone who shares a similar view! Luckily, I have be asked to teach some classes well in advance. I must say I really respect faculty in their research efforts and the impact that their research can have. However, I have to say that, for the most part, I do not respect their teaching efforts. In instruction sessions for four different classes from different disciplines, I rewrote professor authored assignments to make them more clear and focused. It was great that the original assignments targeted library research but they needed major revisions (directions were vague, there were no measurable outcomes, no set format like page length etc). The professors accepted my versions. I really do applaud the professors for contacting me in the first place and am happy that they were willing to change things.

I just can’t conduct instruction for assignments that will easily frustrate students and that will then subsequently cause the students to see library instruction as useless. I am all for challenging our students but I think teachers need to be clear in expectations. Maybe my military background helps me influence others. And it surely has prepared me to handle tons of B.B.S. in academia (bureaucratic bull sh**) :).