Teaching with Active Learning Fellowship
Exploring Strategies to Actively Engage Students in the Learning Process
Lumen Circle’s Teaching with Active Learning fellowships helps faculty build skills and knowledge around how a wide range of evidence-based teaching practices can be integrated with active learning approaches to effectively support student learning.
Benefits of Teaching with Active Learning
- Teaching with Active Learning puts students at the core and values creating and collaborating over passive learning
- Increases student engagement by making students partners in the teaching-learning process and improves student accountability
- Stimulates higher-order thinking and critical analysis
- Places a greater emphasis on student exploration of attitudes, values, and habits and can increase student motivation
Expected Outcomes of Teaching with Active Learning Fellowship
Implement active learning teaching practices to create vibrant, engaging learning environments
Examine effective active learning teaching strategies
Reflect on the impact of using active learning strategies
Evaluate current instruction for ways to promote interaction that support active learning
Brief Overview of the 9-Week Fellowship Curriculum
Explore and Connect: Explore the platform, complete your profile, and meet each other
Supportive and Varied: Explore how creating a supportive learning environment impacts student persistence, and how varying teaching modalities and techniques keep students engaged. Write a plan to add Supportive and/or Varied evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) to a learning activity you will teach over the next week. Report on how your plan and activities went and receive feedback from other faculty in your Circle. Give feedback to 2 of your peers on their plans and activities.
Reflection and Goal Setting: Create 1 – 3 SMART goals to target your fellowship experience.
Belonging: Explore teaching strategies that support success for all students by helping them feel seen, respected, and partners in the learning process. Write a plan to add Belonging Evidence-based Instructional Practices (EBIPs) into a learning activity you will teach over the next week. Report on how your plan went and give and receive feedback from Circle peers.
Organized and Challenging: Delve into how creating an Organized and Challenging learning environment leads to increased student achievement. Write a plan to add the associated EBIPs to a learning activity you will teach over the next week. Report on how your plan went and give and receive feedback from Circle peers.
Conclusion & Meta-Reflection: Reflect on your fellowship experience. What did you learn? What changes have you made in your teaching? What do you want to learn and do next?
I am certain my students have benefitted from my experience with Lumen–our classes were more lively, I am seeing some strong essays that show the results of our #Time on Task in the classroom. Several of them have noted that various I am certain my students have benefitted from my experience with Lumen–our classes were more lively, I am seeing some strong essays that show the results of our Educators maximize the amount of learning time students spend actively engaged in practice (as opposed to more passive activities, like listening to live or recorded lectures). In face-to-face classes, educators set aside in-class time for students to practice and receive support from the educator and other students as they practice. In online or hybrid classes, educators set aside synchronous class time for students to practice and receive support from the educator and other students as they practice. Educators provide extra supports to students as they begin learning new ideas and practicing new skills. They slowly remove these extra supports as students grow in their understanding and capability. Think of these scaffolds as “training wheels.”
The Lumen Circle emphasizes teaching at its best in community— teachers interacting with students, relationships of support and cooperative learning among students, and teachers collaborating together to sustain and promote education that inspires thinking, creativity, and engagement.
Being part of Lumen Circles has encouraged me to think more openly about the different ways students can learn and to be a more deliberate and caring educator. My absolute favorite part of being a member of Lumen is hearing all the different ways in which other educators are exploring and bettering their own class systems—it’s inspiring both on a personal and professional level.
I think all educators, no matter how experienced, will gain a new perspective on teaching after committing themselves to exploring different teaching practices and reflecting on what works, what doesn’t, and everything in-between. It’s easy to become hyper-focused on minute details and forget about the bigger picture during a course: having a consistent and structured community to help you looking at all the big and little components is invaluable.
I appreciate being a member of a Lumen Circle because it keeps me accountable. Week in and week out, I’m compelled to be deliberate about my classroom objectives and expectations. While this means that I have had to put more thought and effort into planning my courses (assignments, assessments, activities), I no longer feel the panic of on-the-spot improvisation. Lumen Circles is a wonderful “corrective” for those of us who went through graduate school without a formal introduction to college teaching, Most importantly, I love being a part of a community of educators who are just as passionate about teaching and learning as I am.
I gained much confidence and understanding in my teaching through the fellowship program. I found that many tactics that were discussed were actually used in my previous teaching–I often use them in my teaching but am not aware that they have a fancy term to describe them. This boosted my confidence and made me realize that I was not that bad at teaching. I also learned new tactics through communicating with peers, and was able to see their fantastic “tricks” and designs for teaching.
Advice for other educators: teaching takes time and will get better, and eventually becomes a self-rewarding profession.
I deeply appreciate the facilitators, Chris and Larry, for their diligent, friendly, helpful assistance. They make the cohort cohesive and a family. Although I was really busy with my research, teaching, and conference attendance, and can not fulfill much responsibility in the program, they still incorporate me, nicely reminding me of the works that can be useful in my teaching. I am grateful to be able to meet them and for their work.
What are Lumen Circles?
Lumen Circles are professional development experiences that use virtual learning communities to connect faculty members with peers and help them hone their expertise as student-centered teachers.
Grounded in evidence-based teaching practices and self-reflection, Lumen Circles work well for any faculty member, in any discipline, and at any stage of career.
How Do Lumen Circles Work?
Set goals. Identify how you want to develop your teaching practice and pedagogical profile.
Build skills. Virtual, workshop-style learning opportunities expand your teaching repertory, help you work smarter through teaching “hacks,” and deepen your understanding of evidence-based practices.
Teach and reflect. Apply what you’re learning, consider how it’s working for your students and where to improve.
Share via virtual learning circles. Connect with peers, exchange feedback, and collect new ideas through expertly-facilitated learning circles. Our user-friendly platform makes it simple to connect and collaborate.
Recognize growth and progress. Track progress towards goals and see your teaching evolve as you incorporate new practices with students.
Pick the Offering that Works for You
We offer Lumen Circles experiences with different areas of focus, levels of depth and duration.
- Lumen Circle Fellowships: Build skills in targeted areas, apply what you’re learning, and collaborate within a virtual learning circle
- Success Accelerator: Engage with peers and accelerate the path to effective teaching and learning using Lumen courseware
Learn more about which fellowship suits you in a Lumen Circles: What to Expect Webinar.
What’s Your Role?
Your connection with students is paramount to their success, but knowing how to reach them can be challenging. Lumen Circles provide opportunities to expand your teaching repertory in areas you want to grow. You can join colleagues to learn, share ideas, compare experiences, and be part of a thriving community focused on evidence-based teaching for today’s students.
Lumen Circles complement your center’s resources and priorities. Some centers offer a full menu of programs but struggle to generate meaningful evaluation data. Others cater to new faculty, but they sometimes overlook faculty who are later in their careers. Still others struggle to meet the needs of part-time faculty or graduate students. We can tailor offerings to fit the faculty members you want to reach with skill-building and professional growth focused on teaching practices that impact student success. We also offer flexible options around pricing and scale.
Recognizing student success is a result of faculty success, Lumen Circles can help you provide a broader foundation of faculty support to transform teaching and learning with a focus on evidence-based instructional practices. We can also help you track alignment and measure progress towards institutional and faculty goals for improving teaching practice.
Lumen Circles FAQs
Do you have a question we don’t answer here? Contact us or send a note to info@lumenlearning.com.
Lumen Circles’ evidence-based teaching framework uses a methodology and process originally adapted from research published in Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters by Gail Mellow, Diana Woolis, Marisa Klages-Bombich and Susan Restler. In work funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lumen expanded the framework to add a “Belonging” theme that fully incorporates practices associated with diversity, equity, and inclusion into the Lumen Circles model. The framework identifies practices that increase student success, according to research evidence. Lumen Circles’ methodology guides faculty members through a process to recognize, explore and apply these effective practices in their teaching. It helps them become more aware and purposeful about making pedagogical choices that support student success.
Primary principles include:
- Self-reflection: Faculty fellows examine their own teaching practices to become more aware of pedagogical choices and their impact on student success.
- Appreciative Inquiry: This inquiry method invites educators to recognize and celebrate their strengths and what’s working in their teaching practice, and then using this as a foundation for self-directed growth and improvement.
- Evidence-based Instructional Principles: To help faculty make the learning environment more student-centered, we encourage them to explore and try out specific practices aligned in four distinct dimensions of teaching practice: Supportive, Challenging, Organized, and Varied.
- Pedagogical Analytics: As fellows progress through the Lumen Circles experience, we measure changes in faculty teaching patterns, progress towards their teaching goals, and how this aligns with institutional goals and changes in student outcomes.
We construct virtual learning circles with careful attention to the goals and context of faculty members participating in Lumen Circles fellowships. Learning circles always align with the theme of the fellowship to connect faculty with peers working to expand their teaching practice in similar directions. As a rule, learning circles include faculty from multiple institutions teaching in related disciplines, such as STEM or social sciences. We may make exceptions to this rule in order to support specific institutional objectives, such as learning circles to connect faculty with peers from their own institution.
We coordinate start and end dates for Lumen Circles fellowships and other professional development programs to align with the academic calendar and windows when the experience will be most productive for participating faculty members. Staggered start dates generally coincide with the start of term for spring (winter), summer, and fall. Depending on interest, faculty availability, and demand, we can add additional fellowship terms as needed.
Note the Lumen Circles experience does require that faculty are actively teaching during a majority of their fellowship term because reflective practice is most beneficial when there are immediate opportunities to consider teaching choices, evaluate what’s working and try out new pedagogical directions.