First up—Nutrition.
This was unfamiliar territory to us. The prof was keen. We wanted to make it
work. Because the classes were large, we scheduled small sessions, dividing the
class into four groups. Each group received the same session. (One student was
so excited that she signed up for all four sessions. I love it!) Why did we do
this? The in-session assignment required the students to move around the room.
Past or
Portal?, reviewed
briefly in another post to this blog, gave me the idea of speed dating sources.
With our limited reading room space, we needed a cap of 20 students to allow
for their physical movement between tables. I could have had each student pass
around the sources, but I didn’t want the material to get damaged. So, the
students moved around the room.
Strong
encouragement from my research assistant, who is an Education student, caused
me to refrain from my usual session “formula”. No longer would I see the
boredom in students’ eyes while I explained the mandate and how to access
collections. That’s all embedded in the session and delivered as a matter of
fact during the exercise. We have decided to aim the sessions towards active
learning. The sessions offered now challenge the students’ pre-conceived
understanding of sources while providing a safe venue for hands-on examinations
of the resources.
Nutrition’s
four sessions, offered in September, were the first opportunities to test this
method. Our immediate impression was that it was a success. Of course, some
tweaking was done between the delivery of each session, but the method was
sound. We are now planning the other session along the same lines. Some form of
speed dating is involved.
Active learning—that’s
where it’s at.
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