Active Learning Strategies in Education

New Media  | 01 de diciembre de 2017  | Vistas: 138

Gabriel Calzada talks about active learning strategies in education, with writer and expert in the topic, Alfie Kohn, who visited Universidad Francisco Marroquín to facilitate the seminar Too much achievement, too little learning, and impart the conference The importance of choice: supporting autonomy at home and in the classroom, to educators around Guatemala.

Young people learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.” — Alfie Kohn

At UFM “choice” is really important. Alfie describes how to introduce choice in the classroom and says it is not just an individual matter; it also has a community sense to promote a real democracy, and promoting good decision making instead of following directions. Latter they discuss alternatives to evaluate students work instead of grades, which are proven to be the less effective method in learning, such as qualitative narrative comments:

The more students are focused on improving their grades, the less interested they become in what they’re learning, the less likely they are to prefer challenging tasks and the more superficial their learning becomes.” — Alfie Kohn

Later, Alfie describes how the teacher can promote independence, autonomy and self determination, by sharing power with the students and making them the center of the class, generating different learning possibilities to build the course together.

Quality learning is active learning.” — Alfie Kohn

Finally, Kohn talks about the three most successful ways to promote intrinsic motivation, called the three C’s:

• Content: What are we asking students to learn? Is it meaningful?
• Choice: Do we give the opportunity for students to say what they are doing?
• Collaboration: How can we learn from one another?

Change the way to teach to a more effective one with Alfie’s great advice!