Its All About Fun!
What does that mean?
It means that if you want a student to learn something, they have to want to learn. One of the easiest ways to convince a student to want to learn is to make it fun. This can be accomplished by using some great pedagogical approaches that have been developed over that past 30 years. These pedagogies are blended in the Deep learning method and they are all focussed on actually helping students learn in a fun and efficient manner. Below are the pedagogies central to our method.
Peer instruction: Central to all aspects of the course has been the use of peer instruction based on the simple principle that the best person to teach somebody a complex concept is the person right next to them that just learned the concept themselves. But, there may be times when only a small fraction of the class actually "gets it". So then they need help. Faculty may be the worst people to help our students simply because they know too much and cannot fathom a student not understanding something. Usually, a graduate student will be a better at this than a faculty member simply because they may still remember something about the process they went through to learn the concept. Still better is a student who took the course the year before. To address this important issue we hire undergrads who took the course the year before to assist with the in-class teaching. These instructional aides have been extremely helpful as they are excellent at interacting with the students. They are relatively inexpensive because they only work 5 hours a week and are just paid hourly. If funds are not available, it is always possible to ask those groups that get the answer first, or clearly understand the learning objective that the activity is based on, to help other groups that are still struggling. The key pedagogical aspect is simply that you want those that just learned something to teach their peers who are still struggling.
Formative assessment and feedback: A second central theme to the course is that we want to let our students try and fail many times without penalty while they are learning. We also want to provide as instant as possible feedback so that they can quickly learn from their mistakes. We accomplish this in several ways. The reading and annotation part of the course is only graded for thoughtful reading and annotation, not correct statements. Homework is not graded for accuracy, rather it is graded for effort and honesty in their written reflections after an in-class session where they generate a better solution as a group. Exams are given frequently and in a process that is far more formative than summative from team based learning called readiness assurance assessments (RAA)[5]. The end result is that we actually celebrate failure - as long as it is the right kind of informed failure that will lead, progressively, to success.
Team and project based learning: All aspects of the course revolve around individual work followed by group work. This happens during the initial reading assignments, during in-class activities, with projects, with homework, and even on exams (the RAAs).