ALI 2009

Just finished up my second DCAL Active Learning Institute (ALI 2009) http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dcal/workshops/ALI.html

One of the things we learn at ALI is that we don't learn something unless we do something - the speaker or the writer or the teacher is the learner.

Another thing we learn is that memories, concepts and facts are not pulled from our brains like a computer from a hard drive, but are reconstructed at each use as an archeologist reconstructs artifacts from a dig.

So in order to consolidate my thinking and insure that my future self will have an accurate record of present day recollections I thought I'd write up this blog.

Main Thoughts:

1)  It was a relief to be able to enjoy ALI has a cross between an Institute developer / facilitator and participant.  My actual presentation duties were light, 30 minutes with Anthony on using the Blackboard blog for in-class active learning exercises.  This gave me the luxury of listening a great deal and talking less (a skill I'm working to improve).  So much of my job feels like a push against a status quo.  At ALI it felt really good to let some other folks do most of the pushing, allowing me to learn about how they try to bring about change and learn some new things along the way.

2) Ironically the parts of ALI that stick with me most are the least active parts of the learning.  We had amazing talks by Chris Jernstedt on the brain and learn, Josh Compton on effective presentation styles, and Malcolm Brown on the same topic.  These talks did incorporate some active elements as they had lots of give-and-take with our ALI group, but they were still basically lectures.  My background over the past years has been so much based on online learning that I tend to discount the power of quality teaching presentations.  This was a good counter-balancing experience.

3) ALI holds two powerful core messages for me.  Both of these messages were articulated by Karen Gocsik, and I am grateful to her for all she has taught in the short time I've known Karen.  Lesson 1 is that active learning requires active engagement.  No surprise here.  Karen and Tom are masters at modeling these techniques.  Lesson 2 is that for our classes to be built around active learning it is necessary for us to give up some control and to re-evalute our idea as the expert and master of our discipline.  We need to consciously make space where the students can create, learn from each other, teach us, control what they learn and how they learn, and claim their own authority and autonomy in our classes.  

4)  My final thought is a reflection on how fortunate I feel to work at Dartmouth with such passionate, smart, caring, motivated and engaged colleagues.