Innovation In Learning

12-17-9

Larry Spence
Director, Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning
The Pennsylvania State University
(814) 865-8681

Larry Spence is a political science professor at Penn State who has given plenty of finely wrought lectures in crowded auditoriums, and he knows that lectures can be an effective way of transmitting information. But he doesn't think they're the best way of preparing college students for the highly competitive, internationalized workplace they'll enter after they graduate.

"Teaching is a bad idea," says Spence, who is director of Penn State's Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning. "We've been teaching for 2,500 years, and it hasn't improved that much. Our focus ought to be on learning, not teaching."

Rather than have students learn by passively taking notes in a lecture, Spence says, teachers can encourage active learning by assigning students a project that can be done only through a team effort. By letting students figure out by themselves -- with appropriate coaching -- what they need to know to solve the problem embodied in the project. By challenging, motivating and engaging them, and making sure they are doing the work. By helping them to realize that "intelligent failure" and "creative mistakes" are better than getting the right answer the first time.

The Institute encourages faculty to design "problem-focused, problem-framing" classes that foster inquiry, initiative and teamwork. Now in its second year of operation, the Institute has sponsored more than 60 innovative learning projects involving disciplines such as robotics, chemistry, agricultural economics, statistics, political science, psychology, computer science, sociology and engineering.

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Contact: Alan Janesch or Christy Rambeau at (814) 865-7517 (office)