{"id":6790,"date":"2016-04-20T15:17:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-20T19:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/2016\/blog-beyond-powerpoint-edtech-and-the-active-learning-experience\/"},"modified":"2022-01-06T15:52:05","modified_gmt":"2022-01-06T20:52:05","slug":"blog-beyond-powerpoint-edtech-and-the-active-learning-experience-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2016\/blog-beyond-powerpoint-edtech-and-the-active-learning-experience-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: Beyond PowerPoint: EdTech and the active learning experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Michele Hall, Educational Technology Development Coordinator, EDC <\/em><\/p>\n

The EDC\u2019s Teaching and Learning Symposium<\/a> is fast upon us, and this year\u2019s theme\u2014Active Engagement: Success in the Classroom and Beyond\u2014has me reflecting on how my own teaching practice has evolved over the years, from passive to interactive, and how it continues to evolve as new educational technologies make possible engaging learning experiences not previously feasible.<\/p>\n

When I started teaching, I had pretty disastrous results in terms of engaging my students. My first teaching assignment was at a small-sized Ontario university, where I taught a class of approximately 65 students. I felt very proud of my use of presentation software; I used both PowerPoint and Prezi (new at the time) throughout the term to supplement and enhance my lecturing. I had embedded videos, sound and lots of images to illustrate my topics and grab the audience\u2019s attention. How could the students possibly not be engaged with the multimedia presentations I was giving them?<\/p>\n

But engaged they were not! Besides the turnout rate steadily declining as weeks went on, I frequently had to contend with students Facebooking, tweeting, texting or just plain old falling asleep as I droned on and on about contemporary Canadian poets\u2019 understanding of the \u201cimage\u201d as poetic concept.<\/p>\n

The wake-up call for me came towards the end of the semester, when one of my students let out a shriek in the middle of my lecture; chaos erupted and, as the students around her clamoured, I managed to find the cause of the commotion was the corpse of a large, black cricket that had somehow fallen from the ceiling and onto her desktop. What an omen! \u201cIf even the crickets are bored to death in your class,\u201d I thought to myself, \u201cyou\u2019re clearly doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of my problem was a misguided reliance on slide software to engage my students. Now, I don\u2019t mean to suggest that slide presentations can\u2019t be effective teaching tools\u2014and I hope to write about how to create engaging PowerPoints in more detail at a later time\u2014but if a lecture is a lecture, a teaching model that encourages one-way communication and places students in a passive rather than active role<\/a>, adding an essentially (though not exclusively) passive technology such as PowerPoint to the mix isn\u2019t going to magically transform it into an engaging learning experience.<\/p>\n

Since my early foray into teaching, I\u2019ve learned that a lecture does not have to be a lecture (from the French word for \u201creading\u201d), and that one can easily transform a lecture into an interactive lecture<\/a> or lesson-activity model of learning. An interactive lecture divides the learning time into lesson and activity blocks, creating opportunities for students to apply and\/or assess their learning, through discussion, quizzing, brainstorming, role-play, etc., becoming active participants in the lecture. Universities and colleges are rapidly adopting this pedagogical model because it complements recent research indicating that students can only focus on lectures for 15-20 minute intervals<\/a>. If you haven\u2019t tried interactive lecturing, the EDC offers some great teaching tips<\/a> and tools<\/a> to help you get started.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a whole host of technological tools out there, beyond PowerPoint, that can support interactive lecturing and active learning experiences in your online, blended and face-to-face courses. Some are even available within our own LMS, cuLearn! Over the next few weeks and months, I\u2019ll be writing about four prime categories of EdTech tools\u2014including \u00a0screencasting software, quizzing and polling tools, collaborative technology, and social learning tools\u2014that are fairly easy to adopt and can help you transform your basic lecture into an interactive one. Subscribe to our feed by clicking on the feed icon and be the first to hear about these engaging technologies. Can\u2019t wait? Come and visit me in the EDC, 410 Dunton Tower, and I\u2019d be happy to discuss ways you can incorporate them into your lessons.<\/p>\n

Michele Hall is the Educational Technology Development Coordinator at the EDC. She holds an MA and PhD in English Literature and currently teaches Academic and Technical Writing in the Bachelor of Interior Design program at Algonquin College. She\u2019s also a certified peer reviewer for Quality Matters, a nonprofit organization running a research-supported approach to quality assurance in online learning environments.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michele Hall, Educational Technology Development Coordinator, EDC The EDC\u2019s Teaching and Learning Symposium is fast upon us, and this year\u2019s theme\u2014Active Engagement: Success in the Classroom and Beyond\u2014has me reflecting on how my own teaching practice has evolved over the years, from passive to interactive, and how it continues to evolve as new educational […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142,677],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlog: Beyond PowerPoint: EdTech and the active learning experience - 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