Interactive Learning: Technology in the Classroom

Most -- if not all -- of the important skills in our life are acquired outside the traditional classroom setting. Yet we continue to teach using a lecture, or sage-on-stage, format where students passively take down information. Instead, we should really focus on the assimilation of that information and shift the focus from teaching to helping students learn. Over the past 20 years, instructors world-wide have begun to adopt Peer Instruction to get students to think creatively in class. With the advent of new technology the process can be significantly improved. A new data-analytics driven audience response system does away with multiple choice questions and helps instructors design better questions, manage time and process flow, and optimizes the discussions in the classroom. I will show how shifting the focus in lectures from delivering information to team work and creative thinking greatly improves the learning that takes place in the classroom and promotes independent thinking.