Faculty Intention and Faculty Implementation - Do They Align?

Abstract

There have been a multitude of calls to reform teaching in undergraduate education. The implementation of active learning in the classroom increases student learning, relative to traditional lecturing. I worked with university faculty to determine the relationship between their interest in (intent) and application of active learning (behavior). I measured the intent of faculty to implement active learning and conducted classroom observations. Based on these classroom, observations, I found there is not always an alignment between an individual’s intent and behavior. Therefore, interviews were conducted to determine what factors could be contributing to the misalignment. Several factors were found: preparation time of new activities, classroom setup/layout, and the student population. Understanding what factors impact the change from traditional teaching to active learning teaching creates an opportunity to provide faculty with remedies such factors.