Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching

BILT Senior Education Developer Amy Palmer interviewed Dr. Simon Brownhill, editor of ‘Creative Practice in Higher Education‘ (Routledge, 2024) and Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Bristol, about his take on active learning and how he integrates it into his teaching.

1. Active learning is a really well-used term in education but it doesn’t have a set definition. What is your personal definition of ‘active learning’?

As an academic who is rooted in 20+ years of professional practice (as a school teacher, an education trainer, and a lecturer), I personally subscribe to the idea of ‘active learning’ referring to the practical endeavours of lecturers that promote student engagement in the learning context. 

2. What would we expect to see if we sat in on one of your lectures with regard to ‘creative touches’?

By way of a quick explanation, I define ‘creative touches’ as alterations and additions, the former referring to the tweaks or modifications that are made by lecturers to their instructional materials, with the latter referring to the inclusion of new and innovative ideas that complement and enhance the lecturer’s taught delivery. Illustrative examples of the above you might see in one of my lectures are offered in the grid below: 

Alterations	Additions
Presentations slides – I might creatively play with visual aspects of my presentation slides, e.g., I might alter the size, colour, and font of the text with a purpose, or I might replace dense text with a key word / phrase/ quotation, or I might use animations to stagger the slide content presented to students, or I might mix up the background colour of different slides.	Body positioning – I might creatively vary my body positioning when giving the lecture, e.g., standing behind/ in front of/ to the side of the lectern/ lecturing desk, or sitting down on a chair or stool/ sitting cross-legged on the stage/ podium!
Vehicles for content sharing – I might creatively consider different ways to share information with students, e.g., a dictionary definition, invented song lyrics (the chorus), script extracts, a short poem, or a Tweet.	Voice – I might add variety to my voice during select parts of my large lecture oral input in terms of pitch, tone, pace, and volume.

3. Can you outline the key benefits for students in adding active elements to a large lecture?

Sure – the succinct benefits I offer below positively counter the ‘deleterious outcomes’ that are associated with the lecturing method of instruction, as proposed by Cuseo (2007, p.2):  

• More active student involvement in the learning process,
• Increased depth of student thinking in the learning space, and
• Higher levels of academic achievement (learning) and academic performance (grades).

4. In your chapter, you critique Aburahma’s ‘simple five step paper-based model’, stating it may become monotonous for students. Is there something to be said for embedding this type of routine into lectures for students to feel a sense of familiarity and are able to be mentally prepared? Recent research we’ve done with students showed that some enjoyed knowing the structure of the lecture and what to expect when arrived?

Even though I offer a critique of Aburahma’s model, I do think that there are some positives to using this in the lecture space for both students and lecturers. My concern is that it can quickly become a formulaic way of attempting to actively engage students if it is repeatedly used as part of a taught session. Active learning, at least from my perspective, demands variety from lecturers to engage students – you just have to undertake a simple internet search for ‘active learning strategies’ to see there is an abundance of ways to mentally prepare students and promote a sense of familiarity in the large lecture space, especially if you want students to feel that sense of engagement from an active learning perspective. There is definitely something to be said about students knowing the structure of the lecture and what to expect when they arrive (i.e., having access to the full slides on Blackboard before attending the lecture), but “variety is the spice of life”, and lecturers need to consider how they can engage their students in ways that prevent them [students] from ‘switching off’ and thinking about other things if the lecture does not engage them, e.g., is not surprising, novel, or interesting. 

5. What are your thoughts on the new Temple Quarter campus room designs and lack of traditional lecture theatres? What do you see as the key opportunities and threats?

I have sadly not yet had the chance to look at the new Temple Quarter campus room designs, but it is hoped that key factors such as comfort, lighting, colour, noise, and clutter (lack of) are positively addressed so as not to negatively affect student learning. The absence of traditional lecture theatres is certainly not a bad thing – lectures can still be given to students, but lecturers will need to embrace different types of lectures to diversify the experience for students, e.g., the provocative lecture, lecture-recitation, and lecture laboratory. In terms of key opportunities, the new learning spaces at Temple Quarter will help lecturers to put the student first, giving them [lecturers] the chance to try out new approaches to learning and teaching, and subsequently energising their professional practice in the learning space. In terms of threats, working at Temple Quarter will inevitably yield new and unforeseen challenges in terms of planning and implementation – lecturers will need to be prepared to make mistakes and learn from these as they experiment to maximise the learning potential that the new learning spaces can offer them. 

6. Some of our readers are apprehensive about the move to Temple Quarter and quite radical change to the pedagogy they will have to employ. What one ‘creative touch’ could they add to their current teaching as a relatively low-risk way to get started?

Purchase a large inflatable beach ball. Use it as a ‘talking object’ which can be easily passed around the learning space to generate student questions and answers, facilitate ice-breaker activities, and stimulate student-student interactions.