Introducing Active Learning Strategies into an Undergraduate Engineering Physiology Course

Active learning strategies have been shown to increase both academic performance and student engagement. Such strategies were recently incorporated into the first semester of a two-semester engineering physiology course. Interteaching, in which student groups discussed instructorprovided learning objectives, followed by ranking of difficulty of the learning objectives via a text polling system allowed students to direct the level of coverage of the lecture material. Results indicate that student attitudes are mixed about the active learning strategies, with students favoring the group discussions over the ranking of the learning objectives. When accounting for the academic credentials of the students prior to taking the course, these interventions did not appear to increase or decrease academic performance as a whole from previous offerings of the course.