Page 127 - International Journal of Process Educaiton (Special Issue)

Activity Books (1990)
Activity books contain disciplinary-focused learning activities of use both in and outside the
classroom to help students become more active and engaged in the process of constructing
knowledge and improving their level of learning and learning performance.
In 1989 Pacific Crest Software, Inc. first began to work
with other publishers to bring more active learning
into the classroom, providing more technology-based
learning resources for students. The first major project
was to produce a supplement for Calculus with Analytical
Geometry (5th ed.) (Swokowski, 1990); this provided a
library of 50 learning objects modeled after key concepts
located on specific pages in the book. These learning
objects made textbook examples come alive for the
learners and allowed them to explore concepts by asking
critical thinking questions and testing understanding
through "what if" exercises (PWS-Kent, 1990). At the
Problem Solving Across the Curriculum Conference
(Kramer & Beery, 1990) many workshops focused on
the use of activity books while many others focused on
designing learning experiences using technology. This
led to the development of a series of activity books using
PC:SOLVE. The series included activities for problem
solving (Apple, 1990), contemporary math (Luciano,
1991), statistics (Housman, 1993), calculus (Kaplan,
1994), and physics (Burgess, 1993).
As scholarship focused on Process Education and activity
design improved, the quality of the activity books
improved. Each advancement in the understanding of
the learning process and the design of learning activities
led to more effective workshops for faculty who were
interested in developing their own activity books (Apple,
1993). At this time a spate of new activity books appeared:
Foundations of Mathematics for Beginners (Casler, 1994),
Foundations of Chemistry (Hanson, 1995), Foundations of
Learning (Krumsieg & Baehr, 1996), Beginning Algebra:
A Process Approach (Atnip & Benner, 1996), and Pre-
Algebra: A Process Approach (Atnip & Benner, 1997).
An activity template, based on the Learning Process
Methodology, was a direct result of the work in designing
Foundation of Learning (1st ed.) (Krumsieg & Baehr,
1996), and became the standard generalized template
for activity books published by Pacific Crest. While this
template continues to evolve, its basic structure remains
the same:
Chapter Level
a) a “why” discussion for chapter content
b) orientation of this knowledge area
International Journal of Process Education (February 2016, Volume 8 Issue 1)
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c) problem solving
d) validation of learning
Activity Level
a) a title
b) why
c) learning objectives
d) performance criteria
e) vocabulary
f) information (especially methodologies)
g) resources
h) plan
i) model(s)
j) critical thinking questions
k) exercises
l) self-assessment
The Curriculum Design Handbook (Apple & Krumsieg,
1998) and workshops triggered another wave of activity
books, which were a significant improvement and/or
upgrade from previous versions or editions: Foundations
of Learning (3rd ed.) (Krumsieg & Baehr, 2000), Gateway
to Business (Bobrowski & Cox, 2001), Foundations of
Scientific Research (6th ed.) (Bole & Miyazaki, 2004),
Foundations of Mathematics (2nd ed.) (Fremeau, 2005), and
Foundations of Chemistry: Applying POGIL Principles
(2nd ed.) (Hanson, 2006). Again, because of the obvious
efficacy of the Learning Process Methodology as the
backbone of high-quality activity design, POGIL curricula
(including curricula not published by Pacific Crest) make
use of the activity design offered here, as seen in Designing
A POGIL Activity (Hanson, 2007) and Assessing Learning
Activities (Loertscher & Minderhout, 2007).
After twenty years of implementation, discoveries still
continue to strengthen and advance the design of learning
activities in activity books. For example, based on experi-
ence and feedback from instructors, we realized that the
time spent on in-class learning activities could be made
more effective if students completed pre-activities before
class. Similarly, we found that the learning gained through
participation in an in-class activity could be strengthened
if students completed a post-activity designed to help
them contextualize, generalize, and apply what they had
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