PORTAAL: A Classroom Observation Tool Assessing Evidence-Based Teaching Practices for Active Learning in Large Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Classes

“For example, when asked to define active learning, faculty members in one study offered a range of answers, including simply “using clickers” or “group work” to “emphasizing higher-order skills” (Freeman et al., 2014).”

“In addition to the amount of practice, the quality and distribution of the practice is also important (Ericsson et al., 1993).”

“The resulting ICCs were all > 0.8, and thus all were in the “excellent” range (Supplemental Table 2; Cicchetti 1994).”

“The resulting ICCs were all > 0.8, and thus all were in the “excellent” range (Supplemental Table 2; Cicchetti 1994).”

“One of the most popular definitions of active learning comes from Hake (1998): “those [practices] designed at least in part to promote conceptual understanding through interactive engagement of students in heads-on (always) and hands-on (usually) activities which yield immediate feedback through…”

“To provide students with opportunities to practice their logic development, it is necessary for instructors to formulate questions that require a higher level of thinking (PORTAAL element logic development 1, L1; Morris et al., 1977; Ericsson et al.,1993; Jensen et al., 2014).”

“At the college level, an intervention that had students reflect on a situation in their own life in which hard work helped them improve also increased their achievement in their classes (Aronson et al., 2002).”

“Praise that focuses on effort encourages a mastery goal and can increase student willingness to participate in challenging tasks (R6; Mueller and Dweck, 1998).”

“Furthermore, for some college students, the perception that their instructor holds mastery goals for the class leads to improved performance relative to students who believe the instructor has a performance orientation (Good et al., 2012).”

“…teaching as they do their research, may not recognize that the teaching strategies they use are not as effective as other strategies, or may not recognize that comfort and familiarity often dictate their choices of teaching method (Cole, 1982; Bouwma-Gearhart, 2012; Brownell and Tanner, 2012).”

“In the Bell and Kozlowski (2008) study, students in the treatment group were simply told: “errors are a positive part of the training process” and “you can learn from your mistakes and develop a better understanding of the [topic/activity].””

“Furthermore, the education research literature frequently does not provide sufficient detail for the proper implementation of the educational innovations presented (Borrego et al., 2013).”

“14, Summer 2015 14:ar23, 5 into determining the correct answer and therefore reduces learning outcomes (Kulhavy, 1977).”

“The blue instructor decreased failure rates (instances of a “C−” or lower) on exams by 41% (Eddy and Hogan, 2014) when the instructor changed from traditional lecturing to a more active-learning environment that incorporated greater use of group work in class and weekly reading quizzes.”

“, 2010) and increase overall class attendance and performance (Freeman et al., 2007).”

“Second, a deeper understanding of the material is often gained when students share and explain their answers to other students (i.e., work in small groups; L4; Wood et al., 1995, 1999; Renkl, 2002; Sampson and Clark, 2009; Menekse et al., 2013).”

“…and reward in a large class (students are fairly anonymous and will not get personally called out for not participating, and, even if they do participate, the chance they will be rewarded by being called on is low), which decreases motivation to participate (Kidwell and Bennett, 1993).”

“guarantee improvement in student learning, but it does increase the odds of success over less scientifically based approaches (Fraser et al., 2014).”

“Students also self-report that having time to think independently before discussions allows time to think through the question and come up with their own ideas (Nicol and Boyle, 2003).”

“Some students consider this explanations for their answers (Okada and Simon, 1997).”

“To provide students with opportunities to practice their logic development, it is necessary for instructors to formulate questions that require a higher level of thinking (PORTAAL element logic development 1, L1; Morris et al., 1977; Ericsson et al.,1993; Jensen et al., 2014).”

“…psychology studies in classrooms have demonstrated that the smaller the group a student is in (e.g., pairs vs. the entire class) the more likely he or she is to participate in group work and the higher the quality of individual answers (Chidambaram and Tung, 2005; Aggarwal and O’Brien, 2008).”

“Immediate feedback and correction also improves student performance (Trowbridge and Carson, 1932; Ericsson et al., 1993; Epstein et al., 2002; Renkl, 2002).”

“With these changes, the failure rate decreased dramatically (a 65% reduction; Freeman et al., 2011).”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“Second, a deeper understanding of the material is often gained when students share and explain their answers to other students (i.e., work in small groups; L4; Wood et al., 1995, 1999; Renkl, 2002; Sampson and Clark, 2009; Menekse et al., 2013).”

“Second, a deeper understanding of the material is often gained when students share and explain their answers to other students (i.e., work in small groups; L4; Wood et al., 1995, 1999; Renkl, 2002; Sampson and Clark, 2009; Menekse et al., 2013).”

“This group work increases performance on isomorphic clicker questions and posttests compared with performance of students who only listened to an instructor explanation (Schworm and Renkl, 2006; Smith et al., 2011).”

“Immediate feedback and correction also improves student performance (Trowbridge and Carson, 1932; Ericsson et al., 1993; Epstein et al., 2002; Renkl, 2002).”

“There are many articles validating the importance of opportunities to practice: student learning is positively correlated with the number of in-class clicker questions asked (Preszler et al., 2007); students who created their own explanations performed better on related exam questions than students who read expert exp…”

“These behaviors can also influence students’ willingness to participate in class (Fritschner, 2000; Goodboy and Myers, 2008).”

“This result is not exclusive to biology, as it has also been seen in engineering (Borrego et al., 2013), physics (Henderson and Dancy, 2009), and extensively at the K–12 level (O’Donnell, 2008).”

“For a more nuanced picture of instructor confirmation, instructors could use the survey developed by Ellis (2000).”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“These results, paired with the other studies, demonstrate that both conditions lead to equal Vol. 14, Summer 2015 14:ar23, 7 (how much students like a subject or domain) and the more typical cognitive learning (Ellis, 2000, 2004; Goodboy and Myers, 2008).”

“First, there is a lack of clarity as to what active learning is, and this lack of clarity can lead to lack of fidelity of implementation of the teaching technique (O’Donnell, 2008; Turpen and Finkelstein, 2009; Borrego et al., 2013).”

“This result is not exclusive to biology, as it has also been seen in engineering (Borrego et al., 2013), physics (Henderson and Dancy, 2009), and extensively at the K–12 level (O’Donnell, 2008).”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“…students with immediate feedback on their logic from peers or the instructor, which helps them correct or develop their ideas (deWinstanley and Bjork, 2002) and sets the tone that the instructor values student logic and critical thinking, not just the right answer (Turpen and Finkelstein, 2010).”

“14:ar23, 4 CBE—Life Sciences Education One of the simplest ways to improve student conversations and increase student focus on sense-making and logic when introducing activities is for instructors to remind students to provide the rationale for their answers (L2; Turpen and Finkelstein, 2010; Knight et al., 2013).”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“, 2007), but it has also been shown to reduce the quality of the small-group discussions, as 1) these interactions were dominated by the student in the group with the greatest knowledge, 2) there were fewer exchanges between students, and 3) fewer students participated in the discussions overall (James, 2006; James an…”

“Instead, we focused on teacher-provided incentives that create attention around the activity (Table 3; deWinstanley and Bjork, 2002).”

“PART 1: PORTAAL DEVELOPMENT”

“, 2007), but it has also been shown to reduce the quality of the small-group discussions, as 1) these interactions were dominated by the student in the group with the greatest knowledge, 2) there were fewer exchanges between students, and 3) fewer students participated in the discussions overall (James, 2006; James an…”

“Awarding course points has been shown to increase student participation (especially the participation of low-performing students; Perez et al., 2010) and increase overall class attendance and performance (Freeman et al.”

“, 2013) and student metacognition (Thomas and McDaniel, 2007).”

“…particularly the attitudes of low-performing students, toward the discussion topic (Len, 2006–2007); 2) improve social cohesion and, through that, feelings of accountability (Hoekstra and Mollborn, 2011); and 3) develop students’ argumentation skills (Kuhn et al., 1997; Eichinger et al., 1991).”

“In an experiment explicitly designed to test how grading scheme impacts learning, Willoughby and Gustafson (2009) found that although students answered more clicker questions correctly when points were earned based on correctness, this grading scheme did not lead to an increase in achievement on a…”

“Group work is particularly important for tasks that require students to transfer knowledge from one context to another (Gadgil and Nokes-Malach, 2012).”

“Additional studies have supported this finding that students learn what they are tested on (Morgan et al., 2007; Wormald et al., 2009).”

“Second, a deeper understanding of the material is often gained when students share and explain their answers to other students (i.e., work in small groups; L4; Wood et al., 1995, 1999; Renkl, 2002; Sampson and Clark, 2009; Menekse et al., 2013).”

“At the institutional level, these barriers include a reward system that can lead faculty members to devote less time and effort to teaching (Lee, 2000) and limited institutional effort to train graduate students or faculty members on teaching methods (Cole, 1982; Weimer, 1990).”

“Second, a deeper understanding of the material is often gained when students share and explain their answers to other students (i.e., work in small groups; L4; Wood et al., 1995, 1999; Renkl, 2002; Sampson and Clark, 2009; Menekse et al., 2013).”

“This complexity, in and of itself, is a second barrier: changes in teaching practice can feel overwhelming because of the number of aspects that must be considered, and this can lead to paralysis and inaction (Kreber and Cranton, 2000).”

“Examples include the Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol (RTOP; Sawada et al., 2002), the Teaching Dimensions Observation Protocol (Hora et al., 2013), the Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS; Smith et al., 2013), the Practical Observation Rubric to Assess Active Learning (Eddy et al., 2015…”

“There are many different ways to enact active learning, but typically active learning includes students working with other students during class and more frequent assessment of student learning in the classroom (Eddy et al. 2015b; Freeman et al. 2014).”

“…can reduce bias with regard to who is called on in college science courses; in biology courses in which random call is not practiced and students volunteer to answer questions, only 40% of female voices are heard, even when females make up 60% of the class (Eddy et al., 2014, 2015; Tanner, 2013).”