I pivoted to teaching eight years ago after working for several decades in global health in many roles and settings. I wanted to use my experiences to help students understand how complex global health problems are and that working in partnership with the community is the only way to be successful.
Starting out, I made a couple of assumptions—first, that students would come to class having completed the readings, and second, that traditional teaching methods, where I wove in stories about my experiences, would be the most effective strategies for student learning.
I learned pretty quickly that I had to rethink these assumptions. There were some days, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic, that students would not participate in class discussions, no matter how hard I tried to create engaging lectures.
I was fortunate this past academic year to participate in the yearlong Kaneb Center Course Design Academy (KCCDA) and knew it would be a great opportunity for me to learn how to create a classroom environment where students would be eager to participate in class discussions.
Building Teaching Community
Two components of KCCDA were enormously helpful to me in creating a more active experience for students. The first were the monthly sessions led by our academy faculty, Horane Diatta-Holgate and Kathy Quardokus Fisher. Not only did their sessions serve as exemplars for interactive learning, but two were devoted specifically to (Inter)Active Learning pedagogy.
The second component was the time we spent engaging with members of our cohort, faculty from a variety of content areas and with years of experience. Teaching can feel somewhat isolating, and it seems that faculty rarely meet to discuss our successes and challenges in the classroom. Hearing that others had the same challenges I did gave me confidence that I could improve my own pedagogical methods, and the “tips and tricks” they shared have become part of my teaching toolkit.
The Case for (Inter)Active Learning
There were three especially useful evidence-based takeaways for understanding why creating a more interactive classroom is essential for student learning.
- The first is that attention spans for lectures tend to vary, but when the mode of activity changes every 15 minutes, students are better able to focus. (Our informal cohort poll revealed that for our students, attention spans for lectures ranged between 10 to 15 minutes.)
- Next is that interactive courses provide significantly higher learning gains and better conceptual understanding than a more traditional lecture-style format.
- Finally, research suggests that students learn more when they are actively engaged in the classroom than they do in a more passive lecture environment. However, when comparing students’ learning perceptions between passive and active environments, there is a disconnect. While students in lecture-based classes reported that the quality of instruction was higher, their scores on learning were lower than those in more interactive class settings. Being transparent with students about the value of in-class activities may help them engage with them more fully.
During KCCDA, many ideas for activities to actively engage students were not only presented, but we also had the opportunity to practice them ourselves. I look forward to integrating some of them as well as ideas I gleaned from my cohort into my teaching.
Marie Donahue is a teaching professor in the Eck Institute for Global Health and concurrent teaching professor in the Keough School of Global Affairs. She participated in the 2024–25 Kaneb Center Course Design Academy.