What is Active Learning?

Active learning includes a wide variety of learning activities in which students engage with your course's content. When students sit and passively watch or read lectures - whether in person or on video - they are not actively engaging with the content. If students are actively involved in working with the content, they will learn more, be more satisfied, and be more successful in your course.

One of the most impactful readings when it comes to the literature on education for me is the Seven Principles of Undergraduate Education by Chickering and Gamson. They address active learning by stating, "Student learning is less effective when students sit inertly in classes barely listening to teachers, passively viewing PowerPoint presentations, memorizing pre-packaged assignments, and spitting out answers. Learning is not a spectator sport. Student learning is optimized when students are actively involved in their own learning. Students must talk about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experience, and apply it in their own lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves."

Dee Fink (2005), a leading author in active learning, suggests thinking about active learning as the intersection of three components

doing or observing (what Fink calls a "rich learning experience"),
information and ideas, and
reflective dialogue

Fink's addition of reflection adds an important layer of getting your students to actively interact with the material. One way to add that to your activities is to prompt your students. Consider having them ask themselves:

What am I learning?
What is the value of what I am learning?
How am I learning?
What else do I need to learn?
What are three things I've learned today?
What's one question that I still have?