Teaching New Pedagogy Strategy in China
When four Penn State Science faculty members, along with four undergraduate students, departed for a whirlwind trip in July to teach pedagogical concepts and practices at Fudan University in China, they were not completely sure of what to expect. The group, which included faculty members Sarah Ades, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Wendy Hanna-Rose, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Jackie Bortiatynski, director of the Center for Excellence in Science Education (CESE); and Meredith DeFelice, senior lecturer of biochemistry and molecular biology; along with learning assistant (LA) students Sarah Chang, Nathan Shugarts, Nathan Kramer, and Scott Berman, were on a mission to help Chinese faculty learn about the what it requires to teach science effectively and to provide hands-on, heads-on experience about how to implement this knowledge. Although they were confident in the content and workshop activities they had organized, the team was anticipating some resistance to the paradigm shift that they were planning to present.
Ji Yang, associate dean for undergraduate education in the School of Life Sciences at Fudan University, teamed up with the Penn State faculty to organize the workshops and worked diligently to recruit the best and brightest life sciences faculty in China to engage with the group. Faculty from the top universities in China were invited to attend the three-day workshop taught by the Penn State faculty and student LAs. These Chinese faculty represented 20 universities across the country and were excited about the opportunity to engage with Penn State and develop more effective teaching skills.
While this trip was a first for most of the group, this was not the college’s first experience with Fudan University. Hanna-Rose chose to do her sabbatical there, and has returned every year since then. “I did my sabbatical at Fudan University in 2013 where I taught a class for Fudan students using active learning elements and a highly interactive style. As faculty leader for a Penn State Global Programs short-term experience, I returned to teach at Fudan with Penn State students in 2014. While my Fudan students were responsive to my teaching style, it was evident that they had relatively less experience than the Penn State students with active learning in the classroom. So I approached Dean Yang about sharing my pedagogical expertise with Fudan faculty in a series of workshops. He was enthusiastic about the idea but asked me to consider leading a workshop to target faculty from all over China. I realized this larger objective would require extra help and I turned to my colleagues from CESE who share my passion for implementing best pedagogical practices in higher education science classrooms. They agreed to accept the challenge and we started planning the workshop,” Hanna-Rose said.
The goal of the workshop was to educate faculty of a shift happening in teaching style and to aid them in implementing new teaching strategies. This new vision for teaching, known as active learning, changes the way faculty teach by engaging students; it encourages active participation and discussion rather than just passive listening. While it is commonly thought that this requires more work on both the part of the faculty member and the student, Hanna-Rose disagrees. “For faculty these teaching methods mean doing things differently, not necessarily taking more time. Faculty must gain a deeper understanding of how students learn in order to tailor classroom activities towards things like guided practice with feedback. And students don’t have to spend more time either—they just have to do things differently.”
For the students, it means actively listening and contributing in class and doing more than just reading course material or memorizing information for exams. By absorbing and understanding the material and actively participating in class or team discussion, students are more likely to retain information and be able to apply it to real-life situations.
Changing years of teaching strategy isn’t easy. Rather than asking, “How can I teach this,” faculty are challenged to ask themselves “how can the student learn it?” This model of instruction changes the traditional teaching mindset of providing information to learn material to putting more responsibility on students to learn through participation. This participation includes exercises, such as engaging in case studies, debating, and class discussions.
Active learning techniques not only help students learn material more effectively, it also gets them engaging with other students, allows them receive immediate feedback from instructor and peers, provides them with an opportunity to talk about and process material while still in class, and increase motivation to learn because students know they will be actively participating in class.
In order to more effectively present the material, the Penn State instructors and LAs split the faculty into small groups to learn about active learning hands on. For three days, faculty worked in small group sessions to discuss different aspects of the new way of teaching and understand ways to apply them.
The LA students were a key component in the sessions, providing a student perspective and offering feedback on a student outlook of learning. Because the four Penn State students were all experienced LAs, they were well trained in new pedagogical ideas and served as group facilitators. As faculty discussed potential changes to make to their courses, the students also acted as sounding boards to consider how certain changes ideas may be perceived in the classroom.
At the end of the workshop, each Chinese faculty member left with a product and instructions; they learned the skills necessary to change their way of teaching and committed to incorporating it in a portion of their fall courses. The resistance that the group had anticipated never transpired; the Chinese faculty were very accepting of the information and were excited about making changes in their classrooms.
Due to the success and positive feedback about the workshops, Yang hopes to host the group again next summer to help influence more faculty to embrace active learning and other pedagogical activities to improve student engagement and knowledge.