Active Learning
28 What is Active Learning?
Chapter Objectives
- Define active learning
- Survey various models of active learning
- Understand why active learning is pedagogically effective
- Identify opportunities and benefits to using active learning
- Begin to implement feasible pedagogical approaches to active learning
Active Learning?
Yeah, you heard right. ACTIVE learning. The phrase may conjure up all kinds of images and associations, from shop class to Montessori preschools to new age creative writing instructors who lead participatory vision quests and don’t believe in grades, structure, or lecturing, to imaginative peers who struggled in the disciplinary regimes of old-school instruction, like our good friend Calvin:
While we’ll introduce and explore a few approaches to active learning together as the week continues, we wanted to provide a few initial assumptions up front to help introduce you to the topic as we understand it. In its most elemental form, active learning means doing things and thinking about the things that you’re doing (what psychologists call metacognition).
Countless examples from the history of education demonstrate both that people tend to support what they help create and that meaningful learning is strongly correlated with learners’ active involvement in learning processes. All of us want to be better learners and to stimulate meaningful learning for others, and there’s a (growing) mountain of evidence that when properly applied, active learning can help in major ways: it’s challenging, it’s effective, it’s participatory, and best of all, it’s fun!
This online workshop session on active learning is intended to instigate meaningful learning and thoughtful reflection about your own participation in teaching and learning. Wha? A module on active learning that itself employs active learning techniques? Meta-cognition about meta-cognition?
Yep. In this session we’ll provide some means-tested, effective ways to incorporate active learning into your lives, introduce you to some of the ongoing conversations around the topic in higher education, and invite you to take an active role in constructing useful knowledges on this topic. Let’s get started!
Share & Connect
Activity: Active Learning Definitions
- Search the web (or available print texts) for some definitions of ‘active learning’
- Post the definition that seems most compelling to you (along with the source) under the “Compelling definitions from the web” heading on our Active Learning Definitions Wiki Page.
- Now develop your optimal definition of active learning. Consider your own teaching and learning style and your educational philosophy. Post your definition under the “Your optimal definitions” heading on our Active Learning Definitions Wiki Page.
- Read and consider definitions from your peers!
Active Learning: A Working Definition
Now that you’ve read some of the definitions of ‘active learning’ floating around on the free web and created your own working de