October 20, 2005
Leaving the lectern: Veteran teacher tells of initiation to cooperative learning
The author of the recently released Leaving the Lectern: Cooperative Learning and the Critical First Days of Students Working in Groups, was quite annoyed when he was first expected to take part in group learning.
“The speaker was standing at the overhead projector and had commented about the topic,” wrote oceanography professor emeritus Dean McManus, who — after 30 years of teaching — was attending his first major meeting on the subject. “Then, instead of telling us the conclusion, he told us to turn to the person sitting next to us and discuss what the conclusion might be. Dumbfounded, I looked at that young man and wondered what in the hell was the matter with him. He already knew the answer. Why didn’t he just tell us the answer and get on with it?
“But no! Oh, no! He was serious. I stole a peek at the fellow sitting next to me and thought, ‘If he knows no more about this than I do, we are in deep trouble.’ As it turned out, however, he knew a lot more than I did, but that didn’t ameliorate my irritation at the lecturer’s shirking his responsibility.”
Ironically, it was just a few hours later that McManus latched onto information, from a different presenter, about cooperative learning for students working in groups That became the catalyst to change his teaching.
“What it all boils down to is replacing much of our lecturing with learning activities in which students can take an active part, such as talking about the subject in their own words as well as listening to other people’s words, and writing about it in their own phrases as well as copying down other people’s phrases.”
He was so ready to embrace the change that on his flight back from the meeting to Seattle, he determined to implement it the very next quarter.
“OK, OK, two martinis and wine with dinner at 35,000 feet would probably make any new teaching method look good,” he wrote.
There were just one or two (or 37) little problems.
Indeed, McManus chronicles his missteps as well as the rewards in his book, published by Anker Publishing Co., with the hope that it will help others through what can be a stomach-churning transition.
The format he adopted involved grouping students and expecting each group to tackle a different part of what was to be learned. The students did readings or activities before their group discussed possible answers to the focus question they were to address. After he ensured the students had grasped the material, McManus would reform the groups into mixed groups, each consisting of a member from the original groups.
Each member of the mixed groups then taught the other members what that student’s group had learned, thus combining the information from all the original groups.
As an example from the marine geology course McManus taught, he writes, “Let’s say Group A was asked how certain characteristics of a wave, such as its length and height, changed as the wave moved from deep water into shallow water near the shore. The students quickly agreed on what happened to each characteristic as described in the reading (the length decreased, the height increased); then they had to reach an understanding of how the change happened; that is, they had to understand the explanation in the reading. . .They had to decide what information from the reading was pertinent, how it should be presented, and be as sure as they could be of the accuracy of what they would tell the other students.
“Meanwhile, the students in Group B were answering the question of how the movement of the particles of water changed as a wave moved from deep water into shallow water.
“Combining what both groups had learned would enable the students to understand how both the wave form and the water particle motion changed during shoaling and what effect the energy in the wave form had on the motion of the water particles.”
Turning a stack of lecture notes and overhead images into activities for the student groups was a daunting task, but McManus was ready to give it a try.
More so than some of the students.
About that first day of class, he writes, “I took a deep breath and said, ‘This course will probably be like no other course you have had. There will be no exams.’ My heart was racing. The polite attention on the students’ faces dissolved into astonishment. Startled glances darted about. I said bravely, ‘And there will be no lectures. You will work together in groups.’ My heart pounded louder. I leaned against the lectern for support. The students froze, wide-eyed.
“Only after the course was over did I learn how threatened many of them felt by these words, especially the best students. For they knew how to play the system, how to take good notes, how to cram for exams, and here I had just changed the system.”
Among the other adjustments, McManus had to calm down about how much time the group learning took compared to the amount of material being covered. In the very first group session, it took students 50 minutes to reach consensus on the focus question instead of the 20 McManus had estimated. Four days into the course and they weren’t even through the material he would normally have covered by the second day when he was lecturing.
“I’m afraid it was here that I caught the dreaded ‘falling behind’ disease. (And I was to fall farther behind.) So, prepare yourself from the beginning that you are not going to cover as much material as you did by lecturing, and that this condition will set off a tremendous internal tension the first time you use most types of active learning.”
So, do students learn more through active learning? Research by others using tests and other measures say students achieve more. McManus said his experience was that grades were a little higher, with the difference being that the students at the low end enjoyed improved grades.
But perhaps more telling that testing and grades, McManus says the proof for him was the day students turned in recommendations they had come up with for shoreline property on Puget Sound with a natural hazard of some kind that was a concern for the fictitious property owners.
“Back when I lectured, I had always hoped that the students would respond to my question about their results on the day they handed in their report. I would ask them to say something about what they had found. Of course, you know what happened, year after year. Silence! A long silence before my begging would persuade someone to speak, for maybe half a minute, and always he or she would remain seated. . .
“I squeezed the papers harder against me and, once more gathering up confidence out of nothing, asked the ancient important questions, Who will be the first to tell us what you found?
“Before I could even hold my breath in eager hope, two or three students shot up their hands. I managed to find voice and call on one of them. She got up, and she went to the blackboard, and she began sketching the site of her study. I was delighted. She spoke briefly and persuasively of her conclusion. I was doubly delighted. She was applauded. I was giddy.”
And so it went around the room.
“I confess that I cannot tell you that the subject matter content in those papers was significantly better than that in the papers of the lecture class. . .That said, there is no doubt in my mind that the students’ development in thinking, attitude, and communication during their group work had given them a confidence and capability that was lacking in the lecture students.”
