Advancing Active Learning through Student Topic Introductions
By Gary Gagnon – Professor of Marketing
Central Michigan University

Many of our students are enrolled in four or five courses and plod along from class to class each day seemingly propelled merely by academic inertia. You may have occasioned upon the dazed looks in their eyes: If it is Friday, this must be Paris. Similarly, if it is 10:00 this must be biology. Once your students have come to a halt in your classroom how do you stimulate their interest and get them started and involved in the day’s topic? The answer is straightforward, have the students do it.

A technique that has proven effective for me is to require students to present a “Topic Introduction”. The objective of the assignment is to empower the students with the task of stimulating their classmates’ interest and getting them started and involved in the topic of the day.

This endeavor is an experience that will stretch your students and allow them to integrate new knowledge into their world in preparation for their profession. It meets students where they are, capitalizing on their knowledge and experiences, and building on their energy and enthusiasms, not yours. It creates an environment that breeds participation and involvement, and feeds on their desire for interaction in order to promote deep learning. The focus is on student motivation and ways to direct student interest and energy toward the material at hand thereby creating a context for learning which encourages students to actively engage in the subject matter.

I have witnessed empowered students engaging their classmates in the subject matter using movie clips, you-tube videos, songs, skits, games, vacation photos, work experiences, their pets and their roommates. Creative students used a South Park clip to involve their classmates in the subject of diversity. A wonderfully done CSI: Miami skit implored fellow students to decipher clues applying demographic and psychographic variables. During our subsequent discussions of the topic, it was easy for me to tie-in their examples and discoveries with my content, making the students feel as if they were team teaching the material. The good-natured competition to outdo the previous topic introduction has proven infectious.

You may be tempted to put a bunch of rules in place including length of time and number of terms used. I implore you to fight off these inclinations. I have discovered that the key is to be absolutely sure that the students know the objective: To stimulate interest and get their classmates involved. Let them know that this is how you will be assessing them. Offer them some guidelines, an opportunity, and then get out of their way. Remember that education is a laboratory, not a stage, and it certainly is not a spectator sport. Create a culture in which your students can take “creative at-bats” and engage in discovery.

Skinner cautioned educators that by making the subject matter too attractive and glitzy “we often deprive the student of the chance to discover that something is interesting when looked into.” Offer your students the opportunity to discover the topic.