Carl E. Wieman
Could replacing undergraduate lectures with an evidence-based “active learning” style of teaching significantly improve learning outcomes? Research unequivocally says “yes.”
In his plenary address, “Demonstrating Improvements in Teaching,” Nobel prize-winning physicist
Carl E. Wieman explored the cognitive science foundations of effective teaching strategies, the results of his research, and the implications for STEM education at colleges and universities. His research has led to a more precise way to evaluate the quality of teaching and learning in STEM fields and the social sciences, with findings that would help independent colleges and universities guide and track improvements in the quality of teaching in many other disciplines at their institutions. Wieman holds a joint appointment at Stanford University as a professor in the physics department and in the graduate school of education. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Education, he was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics and has received numerous honors and awards for his research and contributions to education.
Wieman began by explaining that in the past couple of decades, major advances in research have come together “to give a consistent and complementary picture about what’s needed to achieve high-level learning—thinking like a scientist, engineer, or historian—and how that learning develops.” The research originally focused on the sciences, but Wieman said, “Although we don’t have research from classroom studies in other fields, neuroscience and cognitive psychology give strong reason to believe that it applies to almost all other subjects…. And I want to emphasize that the goal isn’t to try to make all students into scientists, but to have them learn to use science and ways of thinking in science in order to make wiser decisions in relevant situations in their lives—for example in public policy debates. That is very different from having students try to memorize facts and procedures.”
Cognitive psychologists have conducted extensive research on how experts think across different disciplines and found a great deal of consistency, Wieman shared. Yes, experts know a lot about their subject, “but more importantly,” he said, “in every discipline there’s a unique mental organizational framework by which experts organize the knowledge in particular ways that allow them to be effective and efficient in solving problems.” Experts also reflect while working in the field, test if a solution is working, and change it accordingly.
Wieman emphasized, “No one is born with these general ways of expert thinking—they require many hours of intense practice to develop.” It could take a university professor more than 1,000 hours to master. He continued, “There’s a fundamental biological constraint. Learning to think like a scientist is not just about filling the brain with facts, but changing the wiring of the brain—changing the neuron connections.” He compared the process of rewiring the brain to building a muscle. “If you want to build it up, it takes a while. To develop necessary capabilities, the brain has to be exercised in just the right way” and feedback is needed to guide the learning.
Wieman said that an effective teacher using this method would be “the cognitive equivalent to a good athletic coach.” They would think about how to master the subject, break that down into specific skills, design suitable practice tasks for those skills, provide timely feedback as the learner practices them, and “motivate the learner to put in the intense effort that is required to achieve that kind of learning.”
Because it can be difficult to describe what active learning includes, Wieman wanted to emphasize what it is
not. “It definitely is not hands-on learning, experiential learning, or flipped classroom…. Sending students off to do something with their hands doesn’t say what they will be doing with their minds. Those [activities] can embody the specific cognitive activities that are critical [to active learning], but there is nothing inherent in them that says they will, and frequently they don’t.”
Next, Wieman discussed how to apply this type of teaching (practice with feedback/active learning) in the classroom. In an example of teaching a large introductory physics course about basic electricity, students were given a targeted pre-class assignment on electric current and voltage so they would learn basic facts and terminology “without wasting class time”; a short online quiz followed to check their learning. The class then began with a question—(i.e. When a switch is closed, what will happen to bulb 2?). Every student answered by using a clicker, which could identify the student and their answer. Wieman emphasized, “The clicker itself doesn’t really contribute to learning, but it gives the instructor a quick sense of where the students’ mastery of the topic is. And most importantly, students have to commit to an answer with some level of accountability…. It gets them to think intently, differently, and primes them for subsequent learning.” The students then discuss the reasons for their answers with a cohort group and re-vote. Meanwhile, the instructor listens in on the conversations to discern whether students are thinking like scientists and then shows students the results. Finally, the instructor provides a summary and feedback on which models and reasoning were correct, which were incorrect, and why; students typically pose many questions. “Cognitive psychology shows that you gain some benefit by knowing right or wrong—but that real learning takes place when you learn why you were wrong, what aspects of your thinking were wrong, and how you can change it.” When students practice thinking like a scientist (applying knowledge, testing conceptual models, critiquing reasoning) and are given feedback, their learning improves significantly.
Scientific teaching consistently leads to greater learning in the classroom, Wieman says. “I have tracked down about 1,000 published studies that take various forms of this scientific teaching and compare it to the standard lecture approach. They consistently show this approach leads to better learning and lower failure rates…it benefits all students but disproportionally benefits at-risk students.”
Wieman said that a number of faculty members at Stanford have switched to this method of teaching in the last year. The university has seen “striking results in those classes—attendance is up dramatically across the board and student response has been overwhelmingly positive about these classes,” he said. “Interestingly…virtually all of the faculty see teaching this way as much more rewarding and don’t want to go back to teaching by lecture.”
“We have a peculiar situation: This method is clearly superior for students, and when faculty members invest the time needed to learn it they clearly prefer it. There are growing national calls to adopt this teaching, but…the norm is still to give lectures. To put this more graphically, we have a situation in which faculty are using the pedagogical equivalent of bloodletting when we have well-tested antibiotics sitting on the shelf. That faculty aren’t using it—and that you aren’t measuring whether they are using bloodletting or antibiotics in their teaching—speaks more to an institutional change issue.”
Wieman discussed the main barriers to adopting this scientific approach to teaching broadly. He said that the university incentive system often rewards research more than the quality of teaching and the “poor evaluation system for teaching tends to make it worse.” It’s also a problem of incentives for the institutions—a market failure, he said. “If students could see which institutions use good teaching methods instead of medieval teaching methods they could choose [wisely]. But they can’t find out.”
To change the situation and improve teaching, colleges and universities need a better way to evaluate teaching. He said typical student evaluations don’t necessarily correlate to learning or to the use of better teaching methods, but they do correlate with other factors not under the instructors’ control. “A better way to tackle it would be to take advantage of the research and make part of the evaluation measure what instructors are doing, how they are teaching, and to what extent they are using practices that have demonstrated to be more effective. If colleges use this as a measure, then it does correlate with learning and effective practices and is totally under the instructor’s control.”
Wieman co-developed the
Teaching Practices Inventory, an instrument created to characterize the teaching practices used in undergraduate STEM courses, to do just that. Faculty members can complete the online survey in about ten minutes per course; eight categories cover all relevant aspects of what faculty members are doing in class. “Every department that uses the inventory is amazed when they see so much about how courses are taught... This can measure quality and show where there are opportunities for improvement, and it tracks when that improvement is made…. By collecting this data, institutions can internally evaluate and reward best practices and externally show they provide unique educational value. All institutions say they value [quality teaching], but there’s no data. Here’s a way to measure it and show what quality is compared to others… Then institutions can argue that they are moving toward 21st century teaching instead of trying to perfect 12th century education (like through typical student evaluations).”
Faculty members need support to make the switch to the scientific approach to teaching, however. Wieman says a typical faculty member will likely need about 50 hours to learn to teach this way, assuming it is in a subject in which they are already an expert. There are various ways to instruct faculty: In some cases, large departments have had science education specialists work with faculty to provide support; in other instances, a faculty member who is an expert at the approach is paired with an “apprentice” faculty member to transfer knowledge and expertise. Wieman said he also has seen good results on a less formal level—providing a little guidance to a few faculty members, pointing them to resources, and getting them together to watch each other’s lectures and discuss the approach. Wieman’s
presentation slides list resources for pursuing the techniques further.