hands-on learning is my favorite
When I think back on courses taken during undergrad and graduate school, the ones that taught me the most were those that involved hands-on learning experiences. During my senior year of college, I took a class called “wildlife monitoring and management” (fall 2012). I could not tell you one tidbit of information that I have retained from the lecture part of that course; funny, when you take into account that I wrote down every word that my professor uttered during class time. Alternatively, I could definitely tell you about what we did in mostly every weekly lab portion of the course. Labs for this class typically involved visiting rural, wooded areas where we learned how to survey and monitor for different types of animals including mussels, salamanders, and birds. Often, this involved hiking through the woods to secluded, undisturbed locations where we could observe these animals in an undisturbed habitat. If you are even remotely interested in observing animals in the wild or just being outdoors in general, this would 100% be the class for you!
When I have since reflected on this class or told colleagues and friends about it, I’ve never really viewed or presented it in a positive way. My negative opinion was mostly because the professor kept us in the field for longer than we were supposed to be out (lab was supposed to be 1:30 to 4:30, but because no students had other time constraints, we would often stay out until 5:30 or 6) and the majority of the labs were spent surveying for birds (I got really tired of setting up mist nets to catch birds). It has truly taken me until right this minute, while writing this blog post, to realize that this class was clearly one of my favorites because I learned so much from it. It has been 5 and a half years since I took the class, but I can still tell you how to set up a mist net to catch birds, how to set up a transect to monitor for salamanders, and how to monitor for invasive mussels in a river. Since it was such a hands-on course, I learned so much more about the subject than I ever would have had the class been purely lecture-based.
While my anecdote about hands-on learning in a field-based course doesn’t really address how to engage the imaginations of digital learners, I think it can be an analogy for student learning and engagement in any type of course. In any case, when a student goes through the actual steps of doing a task as opposed to just learning how to go through the steps of doing a task, he or she gains more knowledge and is more likely to retain that knowledge. For example, you can tell or show a student how to construct a website all day long, but until the student goes through the steps of constructing a website on his or her own, he or she will most likely not fully grasp the concept.
When hands-on learning occurs, everyone benefits. A professor’s words become so much more meaningful when a student can see a concept in action. If hands-on learning isn’t necessarily an option, perhaps student group discussion (or any type of engagement with other students) is effective. Encouraging students to discuss and share thoughts and opinions on course material allows connections to be made and perhaps facilitates greater learning among students.
January 29, 2018 @ 2:08 pm
I absolutely agree that actually doing something helps us learn it better. Not only do we learn how to do it, but we also start to form our own questions about it. What are the limitations of this procedure? How can I improve this procedure? etc. What I think further helps us learn is teaching the same material to others. In my own experience, I have the best grasp of topics that I had to teach to my peers or that I had to teach as a TA in different classes. I think that if we can incorporate opportunities for students to teach what they’re learning to one another (or people outside the classroom), then they will have an even better, lasting understanding of the material.
January 30, 2018 @ 3:08 pm
Kristin, I completely agree! The more I think about this style of learning, the more I realize that it is about getting a little uncomfortable. It involves making students (and instructors) reach outside of their comfort zones and DO tasks in order to learn (or teach) these skills. It’s not allowing professors to stand behind a podium and simply lecture. When we allow students the opportunity to do these skills instead of just listen to a lecture and type notes, they truly learn. In turn, they are better equipped to pass the knowledge on to others.
January 29, 2018 @ 3:30 pm
I had a very similar experience with my field lab courses in college. In fact, those courses are what inspired me to major in environmental science in college and later pursue a gradate degree in entomology. There is something incredibly engaging when you’re able to take the information taught in a classroom and bring it into a different setting. Hands on learning is my favorite, too!
January 30, 2018 @ 2:52 pm
It’s true! I just can’t believe that I let all this time go by allowing myself to view this course in a very negative way. I’m glad I’ve realized the profound impact it has had on my career! If I end up going into academia in the future, I will absolutely structure my classes this way.
January 29, 2018 @ 8:07 pm
It took my way too long to realize that making an insect collection was just a sneaky way of getting me to practice the things covered in lecture. You caught something, now you better figure out what the hell it is. I’m sure there is some real science to it, but physically touching things seems to create a new memory of what it is I am dealing with. This semester I TA woody landscape plants. It sounds weird, but I constantly encourage the students observe the tree with more than their eyes. There are more characteristics to remember the plants by this way, rather than just the look.
January 30, 2018 @ 2:55 pm
You are so right!! Since we can relate to entomology classes, I’ll let you know that I remember much more from insect taxonomy than I do insect morphology or physiology. While I loved morphology and physiology, there wasn’t the same time commitment as taxonomy. I stalked so many insects for taxonomy and devoted so much of my life to identifying them taxonomically! Memories, and information, that I will never forget.
January 29, 2018 @ 9:16 pm
Thanks for your post! It was really great hearing about your experiences in the wildlife monitoring and management course. That sounds like a super fun class! After reading your post, I thought of so many of my undergrad classes where I sat in a lecture and was guided through how to solve a problem. But when I was led through that process, I didn’t know all of the assumptions we were making, what potential problems I would encounter, etc. I was just following the steps. And I often could repeat those steps that we went over in class, but I didn’t necessarily understand the problem and how to solve it and what the underlying concepts were. It was so different when I was trying to solve problems in the real world and had to figure out what information I needed to solve that problem, what assumptions I could make to simplify the problem, etc. So I think it is important to go through the steps on your own but also have to make choices and overcome challenges along the way. Thanks for the post!
January 30, 2018 @ 2:58 pm
I am just so sad that I viewed it in such a negative way for all this time! It taught me so much, especially since I belong to a field of science that spends nearly every waking hour in the warm portions of the year outside observing living things in their natural habitats. Field-based, hands-on learning is certainly awesome!
January 30, 2018 @ 10:09 am
I am in complete agreement. Unfortunately my undergraduate studies did not include too much hands-on learning, practical application opportunities. Not until graduate school, when I was given reign to investigate topics of interest to me, identify problems, and work to find solutions did I realize that I loved to learn.
January 30, 2018 @ 3:02 pm
I’m so glad that you were able to come to this realization in graduate school! It is really hard to understand the concept of enjoying learning (and that there exists a world where we can CHOOSE what we want to research and study) when we are forced to take so many classes as undergraduates, and even sometimes as graduate students. I’m thankful for graduate research and for finally realizing that we have the freedom to study and learn so many exciting things!
January 30, 2018 @ 2:34 pm
We can all definitely agree that experiential and hands-on learning are so much more valuable than reading or listening to a boring lecture. Oftentimes the most basic skills we retain become the most important ones!
A lot of times lab sections are taught by TA’s, and a lot of those TA’s don’t seem like they want to be there. Every single chemistry lab I was forced to take was taught by graduate students who didn’t care to learn our names, wasn’t very good at answering questions, and overall just not very memorable people. The labs were meant to give us hands-on lab skills, but I still could care less about the class because the person in charge didn’t seem to care about us. I feel that if the teacher gives a genuine interest in their students, innovating teaching and learning will follow.
January 30, 2018 @ 3:08 pm
That’s a great point! I guess a lot of times, graduate students and professors are forced to teach general level courses within their field. After so many times teaching these general courses, I’m sure they get so tired of it and it’s not exciting anymore. This is really unfortunate, because it’s kind of hard to get excited about general biology or general chemistry in the first place (ESPECIALLY chemistry, for me). I fully agree with your last statement. No matter how boring a course, if an instructor truly cares about the students, I think the students will take a genuine interest in whatever the course material is.
January 30, 2018 @ 10:34 pm
Your comments encouraged me to find out about the benefits of hands-on learning. Learning by doing (hands-on learning) was addressed in a study led by the University of Chicago. The study found that learning by doing contributed to improved performance on quizzes (Ingmire, 2015). “Brain scans showed that students who took a hands-on approach to learning had activation in sensory and motor-related parts of the brain when they later thought about concepts such as angular momentum and torque. Activation of these brain areas was associated with better quiz performance by college physics students who participated in the research” (Ingmire, 2015).
Ingmire, J. (2015, April 29). Learning by doing helps students perform better in science. UChicago News. Retrieved from https://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/04/29/learning-doing-helps-students-perform-better-science
January 31, 2018 @ 11:43 am
Nice!!! I’m glad you looked this up. I think that’s enough to convince me to employ these methods in my potential future classroom.