Gerald Feldman: Establishing a Collaborative Student-Centered Learning Environment using the SCALE-UP Pedagogy
Abstract
The time-honored conventional lecture (“teaching by telling”) has been shown to be an ineffective mode of instruction for science classes. To enhance critical thinking skills and develop problem-solving abilities, collaborative group-learning environments have proven to be far more effective. In the SCALE-UP pedagogy, students sit together in groups of three, where they carry out pencil/paper exercises (“ponderables”) using small whiteboards and perform hands-on activities such as demos and labs (“tangibles”) during class. Formal lecture is reduced to a minimum and the instructor serves more as a “coach” to facilitate these academic exercises. I will present an overview of the SCALE-UP concept and describe its implementation at George Washington University. I will also discuss empirical data collected from assessments given to SCALE-UP collaborative classes and regular lecture classes at GWU for a comparative study of the effectiveness of the two methodologies.