Active Learning: Engaging Students Through Active Learning
In traditional educational settings, students often find themselves passive recipients of information, leading to disengagement and limited learning outcomes. Active learning, on the other hand, empowers students to take charge of their education by actively constructing knowledge and engaging in deep, meaningful learning experiences. By incorporating active learning strategies, educators can address the common problems of student disengagement, lack of preparation, and over-reliance on a few students for participation. This article will explore the concept of active learning, its benefits, and provide practical tips on how you can incorporate it effectively into education.
What is Active Learning?
Active learning goes beyond the passive transmission of knowledge, and it means that the mind is actively engaged. Its defining characteristic is that students are dynamic participants in their learning, and they are reflecting on and monitoring both the processes and the results of their learning. It involves creating this dynamic learning environment where students actively participate in constructing their understanding through tasks, interactions, and collaborations.
This approach is rooted in constructivism, an educational theory that emphasizes learners’ active construction of knowledge by building upon their existing understanding. By implementing active learning, the traditional approach of transmitting knowledge from teacher to student is replaced with a focus on learners actively constructing knowledge. This is achieved through the creation of guided tasks, interactions, assignments, and environments that foster deep and meaningful learning experiences. Additionally, a closely related theory—social constructivism—holds that active learning best takes place when the construction of knowledge occurs in collaboration with others.
Addressing the Problem: Engaging Students
Active learning directly addresses the problem of disengaged students. By involving them in the learning process, active learning promotes their active participation, critical thinking skills, and motivation. It helps students connect their prior knowledge with new concepts, facilitating deep understanding and retention (Prince, 2004). Moreover, active learning promotes equitable participation and reduces the reliance on a few students for answers, fostering an inclusive learning environment.
There are many active learning techniques that can be used to break up lectures, engage students, and enhance learning. The spectrum below (O’Neal, & Pinder-Grover, 2021) arranges some of the commonly used active learning techniques by complexity and classroom time commitment:
The chart below ranks some commonly used active forms of work based on complexity and time spent in the classroom
 Figure 1: List of strategies to foster active learning in the classroom, arranging techniques by complexity and classroom time commitment (University of Minnesota). |
Effective Incorporation of Active Learning:
To incorporate active learning effectively into education, educators can follow these steps:
Begin by selecting challenging learning outcomes aligned with the curriculum. Clear goals provide a framework for designing active learning activities. More information about Learning Outcomes can be found here.
Formative assessments play a crucial role in active learning. They provide feedback to both educators and students, enabling adaptation and personalized learning experiences. In the formative assessment process, a teacher needs to understand what students currently know and can do in order to make informed instructional decisions and provide feedback that advances student learning and understanding. Therefore, it is crucial for teachers to elicit evidence of student understanding in a variety of ways so that students have opportunities to demonstrate their understanding in summative assessments.
Design in-class activities that promote higher-order thinking skills and deep engagement. Reserve class time for interactive discussions, problem-solving tasks, and group collaborations.
Are you looking for inspiration when designing these activities? Then check out the additional resources below to see some examples of strategies you can use, and related Teacher Stories.
Help students understand the relevance and application of their learning experiences in their personal lives and future careers. By connecting concepts to real-world examples, you can enhance motivation and engagement, as it demonstrates the application of abstract concepts into practice. Directly involving students and including more hands on activities is also a powerful way to motivate and engage students. You can demonstrate how to carry out a procedure such as working through a problem, taking measurements or reading a text closely. Ask students to identify the stages of the procedure from observation. Drawing on students’ experiences, for example, as consumers or technology-users to explain software design and user interfaces, can be more meaningful and helps to connect new or abstract knowledge to their prior understanding. Many lecturers use an example after an abstract concept is introduced. Try reversing this by starting with an example or problem and model how to infer the principles from the example.
Tip: Teachers often use examples after an abstract concept is introduced. Try reversing this by starting with an example or problem and modeling how to derive principles from the example.
To emphasize learning with real-world contexts, consider the following active learning strategies:
- Role-play Scenarios: Instead of just explaining negotiation strategies, organise a role-play activity where students take on different, opposing roles and apply negotiation techniques, mimicking real-life situations.
- Case Studies: Implement real case studies relevant to the subject matter. For a business class, delve into the analysis of successful companies’ strategies, allowing students to see theoretical concepts manifest in practical scenarios.
- Problem-based Learning (PBL): Problem-Based Learning (PBL) is an innovative teaching method where students actively engage in exploring real-world challenges and complex problems. This learner-centric approach encourages students to collaborate, identifying their existing knowledge and determining the necessary information they need to acquire. As they navigate through these problems, they learn where and how to gather new insights that contribute to problem-solving. Instructors play a pivotal role in this process, not by providing direct solutions, but by offering guidance, support, and supervision, ensuring a productive learning experience. An example of PBL in action could involve tackling environmental pollution, where students collaboratively work to understand relevant scientific principles and develop viable solutions. This method not only enhances knowledge acquisition but also fosters critical thinking and problem-solving skills, essential for real-world application.
- Simulations: In this higher order strategy, students assume the role of a person whose job they are learning about. They are given realistic on-the-job assignments with little prior instruction (instead they are to rely on their problem-solving skills and prior knowledge) and learn by doing.
Considerations for Successful Implementation:
Incorporating active learning into existing courses does not require a complete course redesign. Consider the following principles:
- Align activities with learning outcomes and connect assignments to in-class activities, focusing on challenging topics.
- Clearly communicate the relevance of the activities to learning outcomes. 3. Pause lectures for activities, encouraging student discussions. 4. Consistently use active learning strategies to establish expectations.
- Introduce accountability through participation points or feedback mechanisms.
- Engage with students during activities, offering support and gathering insights (formative assessment).
- Provide timely feedback to enhance learning and reinforce correct understanding.
- Explore the value of peer feedback to promote collaborative learning.
Strategies for active learning
Active learning strategies can initially seem intimidating to put into practice. However, they include a range of activities, ranging from simple to complex and from individual to collaborative, all designed to actively engage students and prompt deeper thinking.
Some effective strategies
- Small group discussions
- Individual reflections and self-assessment
- Problem-solving tasks with partners or groups
- Class, group or team discussions
- Polls and voting for conceptual questions
- Peer review and feedback
- Explanation of worked out examples
- Concept mapping to visualize knowledge structures
- Self-assessment quizzes
- Application maps for practical application of knowledge
- Challenges and Overcoming Resistance
Challenges and Overcoming Resistance
The implementation of active learning can face obstacles, including managing the pace of the classroom and overcoming student reluctance. Nonetheless, studies indicate that when the rationale behind active learning is clearly communicated and instructors effectively encourage interaction, students tend to become more open and receptive to this approach.
To address challenges and enhance active learning adoption you can:
- Develop a communal philosophy to active learning (Clearly communicate your philosophy on teacher and student roles in the active classroom up front)
- Start with small, low-stakes activities to gradually introduce active learning.
- Emphasize the importance of student preparation and provide incentives for participation.
- Provide ongoing feedback to students and leverage technology tools to enhance learning experiences.
- Seek support from the Teaching and Learning Center network to help you implement research-based strategies.
Active learning holds immense potential to address the problem of student disengagement and promote meaningful learning experiences. By shifting the focus from knowledge transmission to knowledge construction, you can empower students to become active participants in their own education. By incorporating active learning strategies effectively, you can create dynamic and inclusive classrooms that foster critical thinking, retention, motivation, and deeper learning outcomes.
Literature
References from this article
- Barkley, E. F. (2010). Student engagement techniques: A handbook for college faculty. Jossey-Bass.
- Finelli, Cynthia J., Carroll, Laura, Prince, Michael, & Husman, Jenefer. Promoting adoption of active learning and use of strategies to reduce student resistance to active learning. Research in Engineering Education Symposium, (2001). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10112911.
- Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111
- O’Neal, C., & Pinder-Grover, T. (2021). Introduction to Active Learning. Centre for Research on Learning and Teaching. https://crlt.umich.edu/active_learning_introduction
- Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education, 93(3), 223-231.
- Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., … & Freeman, S. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476-6483. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916903117