Active learning is a teaching approach that involves engaging students in meaningful and interactive activities that require them to think critically, creatively, and collaboratively, rather than passively listening to lectures or reading texts. It focuses on how students learn, not just what they learn. Active learning allows students to construct their understanding of the course content, rather than simply memorizing facts or reproducing information.

Active learning is based on the premise that students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process, rather than being passive recipients of information. Active learning fosters deeper learning, higher retention, and better transfer of knowledge and skills. Active learning also promotes student motivation, engagement, and satisfaction, and develops essential competencies for the 21st century, such as problem-solving, communication, teamwork, and self-regulation.

What are the Advantages of Active Learning?

Active learning has many benefits for both instructors and students, as supported by extensive research and evidence. Some of the advantages of active learning are:

• It improves student learning outcomes, such as comprehension, retention, application, and synthesis of knowledge and skills.
• It enhances student engagement, interest, and enjoyment in the learning process, and reduces boredom and disengagement.
• It fosters student autonomy, responsibility, and self-regulation, and encourages students to take ownership of their learning and to monitor their progress and performance.
• It develops student critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills, and prepares them to deal with complex and uncertain situations.
• It facilitates student collaboration, communication, and feedback, and builds a sense of community and belonging among students and instructors.
• It diversifies and enriches the learning environment, and accommodates different learning styles, preferences, and needs of students.
• It increases instructor satisfaction, innovation, and professional development, and provides opportunities for continuous improvement and reflection on teaching and learning practices.

Recommended Active Learning Methods and Strategies

Active learning can take many forms and can be adapted to different disciplines, contexts, and levels of difficulty. Some examples of active learning techniques and strategies are:

Problem-based learning: Students work in small groups to solve a real-world or authentic problem, using available resources and applying relevant concepts and principles.

Project-based learning: Students work in teams to design, plan, and implement a project that addresses a complex or ill-defined challenge and present their results to an audience.

Case-based learning: Students analyze and discuss a case study that illustrates a realistic or hypothetical scenario and propose solutions or recommendations.

Inquiry-based learning: Students explore a topic or phenomenon through questioning, conducting investigations, collecting and analyzing data, and drawing conclusions.

Role-play: Students assume different roles or perspectives and act out a situation or dialogue, to explore different viewpoints or outcomes.

Peer instruction: Students answer a conceptual question individually, then compare and explain their answers with their peers, and finally vote again on the same question.

Think-pair-share: Students think individually about a question or problem, then discuss their ideas with a partner, and finally share their responses with the whole class.

Gamification: Students participate in game-like activities or challenges that incorporate elements of competition, collaboration, feedback, and rewards, to enhance their learning and motivation.

Flipped Classroom: Traditional lecture content is delivered outside of class, allowing class time to be dedicated to interactive activities, discussions, and application of concepts.

Peer Teaching: Students take turns teaching a concept to their peers, promoting a deeper understanding of the material.

Process Oriented Guided Inquiry (POGIL)

POGIL is based on learning science and shares characteristics (e.g. teams, processes, inquiry) with other forms of active, discovery, and inquiry-based learning. POGIL activities are generally designed to follow a learning cycle with 3 phases. In exploration, students look for trends or patterns in data they have collected or that is provided and generate and test hypotheses to help understand or explain the data. In concept invention, the trends, patterns, or hypotheses are used to define a new concept or term; importantly, students have constructed understanding before the concept is introduced. In application, the new concept is applied in other situations or contexts to help students generalize its meaning and applicability. Thus, the scripted activity provides information and asks questions to guide students through the learning cycle and help them develop process and learning skills.

Experiential Learning

Experiential Learning - Instructor facilitates site visits that allow students to see and apply theories and concepts. For example, students can visit museums or libraries, engage in field research, or work with the local community. Experiential learning may also include 3D printing, under the right knowledge circumstances.

Self-Assessment

Self-Assessment - Students receive a quiz (ungraded) or a checklist of ideas to assess their understanding of the subject. Instructors can consider formative assessment, which offers opportunities for reflection during learning and class, or summative assessment, which examines knowledge gained at the end of a unit or term. More information about student assessment can be found here.

Student-generated test questions: Instructor provides students with a copy of learning goals for a particular unit and a figure summarizing Bloom’s Taxonomy. Groups of students create test questions corresponding to the learning goals and different levels of the taxonomy.

Peer Review: Students complete an individual homework assignment or short paper. Before the assignment is due, students submit one copy to their partner or group, and then provide each other with critical feedback.

Other Active Learning methods and strategies can be found in the following link: 97 Active Learning Techniques.docx

For additional examples, review CELT’s active learning page and CELT’s Teaching Tools: Active learning in multimodalities (PDF)

Resources

The following are several resources including videos that describe different types of active learning methods and strategies and how to implement them. Many also demonstrate active learning strategies in action.

• REALISE videos, SEER Center, University of Georgia
• Scientific Teaching Series, iBiology: collection of videos that provides current and future instructors with the tools to design and implement a student-centered curriculum using evidence-based pedagogy.
• Community-building active learning strategies (remote context), OneHE : community support on different teaching activities
• Introduction to Active Learning, Michigan CRLT
• Active Learning, Yale Poorvu Center
• Active Learning Designs, UC Berkeley | Research, Teaching, and Learning
• Active Learning For The College Classroom : Faust, Jennifer L. and Donald R. Paulson. Active Learning in the College Classroom.pdf, Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 9 (2), 3-24, 1998.
• Check out these research summaries describing common active learning techniques.
• K.P. Cross Academy Downloadable Classroom Strategies: Discover a wide range of classroom strategies to get your students actively engaged in your course.
• Process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL)
• Problem-based learning (PBL) (see also: the Problem Library
• Working in teams.