Active Learning

What is Active Learning?

In the most basic sense, active learning is when students are actively engaged in learning, as opposed to passively receiving information. Active learning allows interaction with the content, classmates, and instructors in ways that allow students to negotiate meaning, engage higher order thinking skills, and investigate concepts.

Why Use Active Learning?

Increased student engagement, content knowledge retention, and student satisfaction are a good starting point. Check out this page on the benefits of active learning to explore more.

Few educational interventions can match the power of active learning when it comes to improving student academic outcomes.

What does Active Learning Look Like?

Learning activities that can easily embrace active learning include

• debates
• discussions
• projects (group or individual)
• case studies and hypothetical situations
• role play
• problem-solving tasks (group or individual)
• virtually any analytic or creative task or project

A Few Examples

Teaching medical terminology? Don't resign yourself to the "reality" that students just need to memorize words. Offer your students opportunities to actively engage with the words they are learning by using tools like Quizlet. Teaching literature online? Have students create an audio or video recording of themselves reading an excerpt that they found evocative. Post the media and allow classmates to comment. There are infinite ways to make learning active. All of them put the student in the driver's seat and allow them to experience the course content in dynamic ways.

When Should I Use Active Learning?

We hope active learning will become your default activity style. While it might seem that the f2f classroom is a more natural setting for active learning, the online classroom has tools (like discussion boards) that ideally facilitate many active learning assignments. Likewise, a hybrid course is the perfect opportunity to use active learning, combined with a flipped class model, to create an engaging, successful learning environment.

How do I Design Active Learning for my Class?

First, the instructional designers in Online Learning are always available to help you plan out your class activities. We can help you find opportunities in your existing course or help you develop a new lesson even course based on principles like active learning. Second, the resources below include excellent guidance for instructors who want to develop more active learning moments in their classes.

• If you need a recipe, try the Four-Step Strategy to Create Active Learning in any Learning Space-Online, F2F or Blended
• or explore this similar post by the same author: Learning Online is not a Spectator Sport: How to Make it Active
•  If you use videos in your online course, you may benefit from reading From Passive Viewing to Active Learning: Simple Techniques for Applying Active Learning Strategies to Online Course Videos

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