Awardee: Robert Kegan (HGSE)

Summary: Awardee plans to redesign his large lecture course based on active learning strategies but, at the same time, preserving possible benefits of the traditional lecture format.

In an effort to reinvigorate the lecture format, Kegan reorganized his 2013-2014 HGSE course, T-006: Adult Development. He incorporated findings from MOOC research and divided some of his 2-hour lectures into small video segments ranging from5 – 15 minutes that included images and text. Students viewed the “video chapters” before class along with their assigned readings. Using the course site quiz and survey functions, students could take short quizzes and respond to open-ended reflection questions to self-assess their learning. Additionally, two times during the semester, certain lectures were assigned as homework, to be viewed through the Collaborative Annotation Tool (CAT). During viewing, students would respond to what they heard and saw with various tags and/or specific questions (e.g., #unclear, #question, #aha). Kegan would review the content of these interactions and incorporate them into his next lecture, thus expanding upon the content to meet the needs of that specific class. Thus, Kegan was able to give a “second pass” at the original lecture, using data gathered from students before class to address areas of confusion and answer questions.

In addition to the lecture insights gained from student data, an unanticipated benefit surfaced in the students’ annotation and responses to one another in the lecture videos. This created another “learning space” in the class, a kind of social network that, if extended more regularly throughout the course, would be not only instructive for the teacher but an additional source of instruction and support for the student.