Active Learning Ideas

Active learning is a teaching style that asks students to be more engaged in their own learning. If your class is primarily structured around lecture, consider replacing some of that lecture time (ranging anywhere from a few minutes to the entire class period) when they are\ passive listeners with activities that invite students to be more active. For example, they can discuss concepts with one another in small groups or pairs or engage on problem-solving and hands-on work involving real world problems.

Videos:
• CTL “sound bite” screencast: Why Active Learning Works
• CTL workshop: Active Learning in Remote Synchronous Classes

In 2014, a meta-analysis was conducted of 225 research studies in STEM classes. The authors found that students in classes with active learning performed 6% better on exams than students in classes where they only listened to lecture. Furthermore, it found that students in classes with only lecture were 1.5 times more likely to fail than in classes with active learning. (Freeman et al, 2014)

In the classroom

Since the pandemic, more faculty are allowing laptops to be used in class and this can open the way to additional active learning and collaborative applications. Here are a few ideas:

  • Think, pair, share is a simple activity where students are given a few minutes to think/write about a question. After that they exchange their thoughts with a partner and then some students share with the whole class.
  • Case studies are essentially narratives about a real-world problem that invite students to develop solutions to it. This page from Boston University describes how case studies can be used in teaching.
  • Use a “Quick write/Muddiest Point” prompt. Pose a question and ask students to write their answer during class. Example questions include: What was the most important thing you learned today? Or, what was the most confusing thing for you today? The Muddiest Point question is also useful for planning where to start in the next class session.
  • Try a Jigsaw activity. Students work in small groups and learn about an aspect of a complex topic well enough to teach it to others in the class. Traditionally this requires a lot of student movement around the room. Elizabeth Barkley offers a way to implement this popular student engagement technique using collaborative instructional technology. (Note this link will take you to Barkley’s book Student Engagement Techniques on UVM Libraries E-book collection and will require logging in with your UVM NetID and password.)
  • Use Polling. Try using an online student response system, like iClicker Cloud. If you become familiar with using online polling applications early in the semester, you are more likely to use them if you need to accommodate student absences due to quarantine or other reasons. You can also poll students using Microsoft Teams.
  • Promote active note-taking. Provide pre-class notes with examples or blank areas in your Brightspace course. Students can download and print them before class or download them to their devices to fill in during class.

In Online Courses

Here are some ideas for integrating active learning into your online teaching.

  1. Build in activities for interaction.
    As a part of the course’s weekly schedule, include assignments or activities that require students to interact with each other.

    Without intentional planning, students may feel isolated in their online classroom. Requiring students to interact with each other is some way, can help them feel connected to the class and more engaged in their learning.

    • Discussion There are several options for discussion, text-based using Brightspace Discussions or Yellowdig. Small group discussions (using Brightspace’s Group Tool), can help students go deeper in their peer conversations and help them manage their time, as there are fewer posts to read. Many factors contribute to effective peer discussion, most importantly: asking open-ended questions that invite multiple perspectives; articulating clear expectations for how students should respond; and providing models for how students can respond to their peers in ways that respectfully challenge ideas and use questioning techniques to promote clarity in expression. Please see the Association of College and University Educator’s Online Tool Kit for specific examples on “Planning and Facilitating Online Discussions.”

    • Peer Feedback Assigning students to provide feedback on each other’s work is a valuable learning experience, as it not only provides them with an opportunity to practice the art of providing effective feedback (a desirable skill in the work place) it also helps them to self-assess their own work, based on the feedback of their peers. In order to be reciprocal, it is good to:

      Articulate the purpose of peer review, including its value as a life skill, your expectations for quality feedback, and how peer feedback will be assessed.

      Provide students with the tools they need to succeed. For informal, lower stakes review (which may be a good practice assignment before higher-stakes review), the Brightspace Discussion tool, for example. If you’re expecting more detailed review (such as involving document mark-up), then provide students with the file exchange tool called Lockers in Brightspace Groups. Consider providing a rubric to guide students in providing feedback to each other.

      Allow student enough time for the peer review so that feedback can be incorporated into the next draft or final work. Consider breaking your peer review assignment into multiple parts over the course of the semester. This allows your students to benefit from their peers’ feedback early on.

      Model respectful, specific comments and ask probing questions when providing feedback. It might be helpful to have a class discussion on what constitutes helpful and unhelpful feedback.

  2. Develop assignments that ask students to apply content knowledge.
    Even if your course learning objectives focus primarily on knowledge comprehension, assign students to apply content. For example:
    • Have students participate in decision-making scenarios.
      Provide a short description of a thorny problem related to the course content that requires a decision. Ask students (working in groups or individually) to arrive at a decision and explain their reasoning.
    • Provide low-stakes quizzes or other activities that require information retrieval. The relationship between frequent, low-stakes quizzing, retrieval, and increased comprehension of course content has been well documented. Not only will this activity support student engagement in the course, it can actually help them save time studying in the long-term for comprehensive exams. Using the Brightspace Quizzes tool, faculty can design self-graded knowledge check quizzes that automatically provide feedback for incorrect answers. This type of formative assessment provides students and the instructor a snapshot of understanding.

    Use Assignments That Require Students to Engage with Content

    • Assign regular activities
      This will help students keep up with the course and focus their attention on what is important. If you explicitly state your rationale for assigning this work, you are less likely to get push back for perceived “busy work.” The Association for College and University Educators describe some strategies (PDF) including providing guiding questions for readings, asking students to annotate readings, and asking students to share calculations.
    • Support students’ metacognitive skills development.
      Most students will benefit from identifying what they want to learn, where they are now, and how they can close that gap. As Weimer (2012) notes, “We must regularly ask, not only ‘What are you learning?’ but ‘How are you learning?’” Asking this question is particularly important for online students to help keep them on track in the course.

      You may not realize the many different ways in which you support students during class time—everything from clarifying assignment details to answering complex questions about the content. Since those structural supports are missing in the online environment, consider way that you can deliberately help students set goals, prioritize work, monitor their own progress, and understand how their behavior impacts their academic success. Consider using practices such as Exam Wrappers (or Cognitive Wrappers), One-Minute Papers, and using the Brightspace Discussion tool as a Journal for reflective journaling. Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching offers helpful resources on metacognition, for helping learners “think about their thinking.”

    References

    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. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

    Yannier, N., Hudson, S., Koedinger, K., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R., Munakata, Y., . . . Brownell, S. (2021). Active learning: “Hands-on” meets “minds-on”. Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science), 374(6563), 26-30.

    Bernstein, D. (2018). Does Active Learning Work? A Good Question, But Not the Right One. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 4(4), 290-307.

    Lombardi, D., Shipley, T., Bailey, J., Bretones, P., Prather, E., Ballen, C., . . . Docktor, J. (2021). The Curious Construct of Active Learning. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 22(1), 8-43.

    Chism, N., Angelo, T., & Cross, K. (1995). Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. The Journal of Higher Education (Columbus), 66(1), 108.