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Active Teaching and Lear ning Ver sus Tr aditional Lectur ing in Electr ical and Computer Engineer ing Cour ses

J ason J . Gu

Depar tment of Electr ical and Computer Engineer ing Dalhousie Univer sity Halifax NS, B3J 2X4, Canada

Abstract –Colleges and universities are developing all kinds of innovative instructional technologies into the various aspects of their teaching environment. Sometimes, it is hard to distinguish the effectiveness of these innovative technologies from traditional ones. This paper compares student test scores and evaluation feedback using traditional instructional technology alone with those who received active teaching and learning on the same course. Detailed method of active teaching and learning is introduced. A study was carried out to prove the effectiveness of the active teaching and learning approach.

1. Introduction

Many academic institutions are utilizing innovational technologies as one means for material delivering. The technology presented in this paper consists two kinds of behaviors: The behavior of instructor and the behavior of the student. The instructor’s behavior is active teaching. Regular teaching is to deliver lectures, give out assignment, labs and prepare midterm and final exam, etc. In active teaching, the instructor will have additional behaviors to facilitate the teaching. Most of these additional behaviors are to motivate the students. If we can keep students intrinsically motivated, provide meaningful feedback, and encourage the development of realistic, valuable and achievable goals that students expect to achieve, their engagement in learning should be enhanced1-4. On the other hand, learning is the behavior of students, who are to come to the class, handle assignment, survive the midterm and final and finally successfully pass a course. Also additional behaviors will be added to have an active leaning behavior. In active learning, students are not only involved in listening, they are also involved in higher-level thinking (analysis, synthesis and evaluation) and are engaged in activities (discussion, writing, etc). This paper investigates the effectiveness of active teaching and learning technology, which evaluates the student learning style; measures their satisfaction with technology and correlates student performance with the innovative instructional technology. This paper is organized as follows:

A prediction is given in section 2 about the effectiveness of the active teaching and learning methods. The detailed active teaching and learning methods are given in section 3. Section 4 describes the way of using active teaching and learning methods. Results are given in section 5 and the last section concludes this paper.

2. Prediction

Various methods are used to teach electronic subjects. Traditional lecturing in electronics subject includes lecture notes, assignment, labs, midterm and final exam. For some students with personal goals, they have their drive to learn and they can motivate themselves. For many other students, motivational pump is Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering Education

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Gu, J. (2004, June), Active Teaching And Learning Versus Traditional Lecturing In Electrical And Computer Engineering Courses Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13051