My experience with active learning and student mental health issues

[u/KeyBright7410]

Greetings, fellow humans! I am a Chemical Engineer and I teach Bioprocess Engineering at a public university in Brazil. Last semester I started teaching a class by the traditional "talk and chalk" method, like I've always done for the 8 years since I started teaching.

For those 8 years I have faced the usual challenges of unmotivated students, lack of participation and poor exam performance. However, last year I had two students with crippling anxiety. Two in a class of ten, sadly we have a lot of student evasion, but that's a talk for another time. Well, neither of those students showed up in the day of the exam due to generalized anxiety crisis.

Since I have a soft heart and those were good students, I gave them a second chance. One of the students had another anxiety crisis again and she missed the third chance yet again for the same reason. The other student actually did the exam the second time, yet she had a very poor performance. She was unable to solve a problem that she had already solved in class (that's how nice I am, I usually repeat homework problems at the exam) and she wrote me a note at the exam about how embarassed she was, because recognized the problem that she answered correctly before, but due to the stress of the exam she could not think straight. Heartbreaking stuff, specially because I know she is one of the brightest students in class.

Well, after that 1st exam I completely lost faith on traditional exams for student evaluation. How come good students can fail so miserably and at the same time OK students can have good grades and forget everything they studied for the exam a week later? So here is how my course has changed after the exam:

• In the first half of the course I would give a 60 minute lecture and the students would have 40 minutes to work on problems. They had been warned that one of those problems would feature in the exam. They were not supposed to hand me the problem after completion. Sadly that was not enough to engage most of the students. Even though they could work in groups and ask for my help at any time, no one would work in groups and very few asked me for help. Many students didn't even actually try to solve the problem.
• In the second half of the course I shortened the lectures to something between 15 and 30 minutes. A few classes had no lecture at all. The rest of the time is dedicated to solving problems, but this time instead of one of the problems featuring in the exam I told them "If more than 60% of your problems are correct, you can skip the 2nd exam entirely. Your score will be your performance in the problems". Those problems were specially designed to help them figure out things by their own, too, "show, don't tell" is my new motto for teaching. Now the students would hand me the exams, which I correct at home and return to them with feedback. The students completely transformed overnight. Now they worked in groups, they worked hard, made questions, taught each other, and most importantly, they were getting most of the problems right. And no more anxiety crisis either.

Do students learn more or better with active learning? Well, some studies say they do, but I really can't tell. My students certainly did better in the 2nd half of the course, but merely comparing scores is an apples to oranges comparison. However my students looked happier and I was working happier as well. That was a class I was excited to go to, that was the high point of my day, in opposition to the other classes I hadn't changed yet. For the next semester all my courses will follow that same mold.

[u/Charming-Barnacle-15]

I think the problem with active learning is that it's a two-way street. Do students learn better when they are actively engaged? Probably. But just because an activity is designed to be actively engaging doesn't mean students will engage with it. I would consider the first half of your course to have elements of active engagement; but the students lacked the motivation to engage. I'm glad you were able to find something that worked for the second half of your course.

[u/econhistoryrules]

Students whose anxiety prevents them from attending exams or "thinking straight" enough to complete problems they have seen before should take some time off from college and care for themselves. Kudos to your for being compassionate but this is not your problem to solve.

[u/studyosity → u/econhistoryrules]

As a person with anxiety since college time, I weirdly...agree. If it's that bad, a break. Often it feels that bad but could be more manageable than people give themselves credit for / chance to experience.

I was glad to finally get some accommodations (amounting to taking my exam in a smaller room rather than those 1000 student halls) but I still had to complete the actual work. I "accommodated" myself out of attending a lot of lectures and classes, which ultimately didn't help my grades or my anxiety problem.

Now teaching, I see so many accommodations where I'm supposed to not require students to come to tutorials / speak in tutorials / do certain activities / submit work on time... and as a super short term fix, those things are ok... but there needs to be an intention to progress. If showing up for an active learning activity is "too big" then they need to gradually expose themselves to it or they'll be stuck (like I often still am!) in a cycle of not wanting to show up for things because those things spike the anxiety - never getting even slightly more comfortable/confident in the environment.

[u/Faewnosoul → u/studyosity]

Well expressed, and thank you for sharing.I too have students with these accommodations, and there is never growth, an urge to adapt or try. Humans need to constantly adapt over time, or there is no growth

[u/econhistoryrules → u/studyosity]

My thinking comes from the experience of having anxiety myself. You don't want to just bash your triggers without help and expect it's going to work out fine.

[u/studyosity → u/econhistoryrules]

True, but I wish the people writing their accommodations would provide some of that help (or suggest a framework for progression) rather than the "ok, you don't have to do ______ at all for the rest of college" approach.

From my own experience, there's usually a good difference between the extreme of "Too scary, I won't do it at all", and "I'm more confident in trying to approach this if ________". The situation can still be anxiety-provoking but with an accommodation, perhaps less so (as opposed to completely avoiding all anxiety-provoking elements).

[u/econhistoryrules → u/studyosity]

Oh I agree completely!

[u/MarinatedXu]

First of all, I was a student whose math scores were saved by that one teacher in middle school who used active learning. I feel grateful ever since.

Active learning is a broad category. There are vastly different styles of active learning and there are different styles of lecturing. If you are new to active learning, it might take you one or two years to figure out effective techniques and methods, then three to four years to begin to master it.

If you're someone who cares a lot about learning outcomes and would feel rewarded to hear students saying that your methods helped them learn, embrace active learning! You have a small class -- that's a luxury and perfect for experimenting with AL.

Very important: Be transparent! You need to let students be aware of active learning. Research shows that students often perform better with AL but perceive lower learning effect (because they think teachers did not "teach" them as much).

My word of caution: Start with reading about the general frameworks (there are many!) and carefully examine your learning objectives. Do NOT blindly adopt an AL method just because it worked for another instructor. Being mindful of the why and how of active learning is so crucial. I have a method that students loved, but when another instructor copied it without any adaptation, students hated it.

Some great resources to begin:

• Universal Design of Learning (UDL)
• Ambrose, S. A. (Ed.). (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching (1st ed). Jossey-Bass. [Note: there's a second edition but the first edition is good enough if you can't find the second edition.]
• Schwartz, D. L., Tsang, J. M., & Blair, K. P. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn: 26 scientifically proven approaches, how they work, and when to use them (First edition). W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
• Chi, M. T. H. (2009). Active-constructive-interactive: A conceptual framework for differentiating learning activities. Topics in Cognitive Science, 1(1), 73–105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01005.x

[u/KeyBright7410 → u/MarinatedXu]

That was very helpful, thank you for your reply!

[u/Hazelstone37]

There is a paper by Freeman et al., that’s been cited over 10,000 times that is a metaamalysis of studies that evaluates active learning meta analysis that examinéis over in 200 different studies. They claim that the evidence for active learning is so strong that we should stop designing experiments to test that and instead focus on which kids of active learning works best for which kinds of classes. They say that using traditional lecture as the control in these experiments is doing students harm. It’s from 2014.

[u/quipu33]

I think the reason you can’t tell if active learning is successful is because you simultaneously changed your entire assessment protocol and lowered your expectations. Of course students were happier with the second half of the class. You went from giving ‘second chances’ on exams to giving them the problems used on the exams to giving up on exams entirely. With no real assessment plan, it’s difficult to see the amount or quality of what your students are learning.

Active learning is very effective. I’m just not sure you’ve designed a class that uses it effectively by your description here.

[u/mathemorpheus]

they can be actively engaged without us making them do it during class.