It’s not enough to call for active learning at secondary or university, or to show shortcomings of lectures as NPR and others do. Yet it’s a vital start! Increasingly I meet faculty who’d jump at a chance to try a new approach to teaching if they had support to make it work well for students. The most basic backing? Samples of active learning tasks, suggestions for how these tasks emerge, and workaround ideas for problems that arise.
Never has change become more critical. With students’ brains in mind – we shift from an emphasis on teachers teaching to see more visible evidence of students learning in any class.
Let’s face it though -some secondary or higher education faculty have never taught in any way but through lectures! “Lectures go back beyond Plato,” traditionalists argue. In spite of research that suggests retention as low as 5% – lectures drone on in most halls of higher education. Have you seen it?
Faculty need tangible support and collaborative settings to build active tasks that align with human brains to ensure higher motivation and higher achievement. My Mita brain based approach for learning and leading collaboratively has won awards for both and have several PhD confirmations of that assurance. Brain based materials not only help faculty shift from sage on a stage they coach active alternatives for guides to the side. How so?
Brain based college classes start with students, and end with a student-led Celebration of Innovation. Briefly stated, they apply course related ideas to address a real life problem, and facilitate their wider community to do the same. Sound like a fun final exam? Students work harder than they’ve ever done, and yet they love it!
The Celebration of Innovation, is a bit like a cognitive trade show, only different in that all teach and all learn in brain friendly settings designed by students.
Looking to transform your higher education classes to align with brain based benefits? Here’s a complete guide to transform your valued lectures into learning tasks with the brain in mind. Check out the brief video at this site to see all that’s included.
Let me know what I can do to support your transformation that will help your university students to accomplish things never before accomplished by using parts of their brain never before used in your classes.
For more information visit this higher education renewal discussion, one Celebration of Innovation of the hundreds I’ve hosted internationally, and also visit my TpT site. What if your summer project transformed your lectures into brain based learning tasks?
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Created by Ellen Weber, Brain Based Tasks for Growth Mindset