Active learning at a graduate summer school: feasibility, student response, and the role of instructor training

Abstract

Active learning is becoming standard practice in undergraduate STEM instruction in North America and is slowly being adopted in graduate courses. Graduate summer schools, one- to two-week programs in which students from many institutions gather for intensive, specialized instruction in their field, are common in physics; they are taught by researchers chosen for their expertise, and their pedagogy remains almost entirely traditional lecturing. We report a study at a one-week graduate school in neutrino and astroparticle physics attended by 38 students from 8 countries. Six lecturers with limited or no prior experience of teaching with active learning introduced Peer Instruction-style active learning into their lectures after approximately four hours of preparation led by a physics-education specialist. Each of the three main lecture streams was taught traditionally on one day and in the active format on the other. Students were surveyed after each of the first two days and at the end of the week; all six instructors were surveyed as well. In every active lecture, spanning three instructors and three topics, 82-100% of respondents reported that the interactive segments helped them stay engaged and check their understanding, and in every stream the difficulty was rated as better matched on the active day. At the end of the week, 33 of 36 wanted such teaching in future graduate courses, and not one respondent disagreed. All six instructors judged the approach productive and intend to use it again; only two found implementation straightforward. With brief expert-led preparation, lecturers new to active learning implemented it successfully for a heterogeneous audience, and both students and instructors want more. The school was also the first time any of the six instructors implemented structured active learning: a summer school can develop its lecturers as well as its students.