Active Learning
Learn how to incorporate a broad range of instructional activities that engage your students in the learning process, as opposed to passively absorbing the information.
What It Is
Two definitions to start us off:
“Instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing.”
Bonwell and Eison, 1991.
“Active learning implies that students are engaged in their own learning. Active teaching strategies have students do something other than taking notes or following directions…they participate in activities…[to] construct new knowledge and build new scientific skills.”
Handelsman et al., 2007
Why You Should Do It
Incorporating active learning strategies, allows your students to take ownership over their own learning. During active learning activities, students are engaged in the learning, rather than being passive listeners.
As we think about what our students’ typical week might look like, it is possible for our students to spend most of their time every day “sitting in” Zoom sessions. By incorporating active learning strategies into your live class session, not only are you breaking up the monotony, but you are also empowering your students to be in the driver’s seat of their own learning journey.
Active learning also increases inclusivity since it invites all students to participate in the activity; helping avoid having the same students answer questions over and over again and allowing for those who may be hesitant to speak up in front of the professor to get clarification from their peers.
Faculty Focus
Prof. Mishah U. Salman
SES faculty member Prof. Mishah U. Salman presented a session titled "Promoting Teamwork and Student Interactions Online" as part of an SES webinar series. In it he talks about Active Learning and presents some of the techniques that he uses to engage students.
Watch Prof. Salman's video (Duration = 1:02:01) on Promoting Teamwork and Student Interactions Online:
Prof. Jan Cannizzo
In his video, Dr. Jan Cannizzo shows us a new technique he learned during the Spring pivot to emergency remote teaching. He loved the technique so much that he is presenting it as a basis for larger adaptation because the method is flexible enough to be applied to subjects other than mathematics, which is what he teaches.
Watch Dr. Cannizzo's video on A Very Simple, Concrete, and Effective Method for Teaching Courses Online (or on Campus).
Link to the random name picker Dr. Cannizzo mentions in his video.
Link to the Pengelly paper Dr. Cannizzo describes in his video.
Sample Techniques
The idea behind active learning is to move away from the traditional lecture where students are passive listeners. Therefore, if you look at your live session structure, it might look quite different when you incorporate active learning techniques.
Before Active Learning
After Active Learning
Research shows that students have an attention span of around 15-20 minutes. In other words, students cannot focus on a lecture for more than 15-20 minutes. How can you re-energize your students and refocus the class? You can:
- limit the amount of time spent in straight lecture
- chunk your lecture content into smaller digestible pieces
- integrate active learning activities after every 15-20 minutes of a lecture
Brief Supplemental Activities During Lecture
The Pause Procedure
The traditional Pause Procedure involves pausing every 15-20 minutes in your lecture for 2 minutes. Explain to your students that you are giving them this time to help mentally digest what was just said or to give them a mental break (also called a bio break). You could also design an activity for them to do during these pauses.
As an example, during the pause you can encourage students to discuss and compare/update notes in pairs by having them collaborate on a shared file in the G-Suite of tools. This approach encourages students to consider their understanding of the lecture material, including its organization. It also provides an opportunity for questioning and clarification and has been shown to significantly increase learning when compared to lectures without the pauses (Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Rowe, 1980; 1986; Ruhl, Hughes, & Schloss, 1980).
You may consider creating a buddy system in your course, assigning the same pairs to work together, or creating new pairs a few times in the semester. These pairs can work together to take and compare notes collaboratively in a medium of their choosing.
Retrieval Practice
When people begin using a footpath through a grassy area, the path becomes more and more prominent, becoming increasingly marked the more often it is used. The same can be said for neural pathways that are used over and over. The more you force the brain to retrieve something from memory, the stronger that neural pathway becomes, which in effect leads to long-term learning.
Retrieval is a learning event that is simple and effective to enhance long-term learning (Karpicke, 2016). We want to help our students practice retrieval in our classroom as well as after the live session is over.
How To
In the classroom: Every 15 minutes during your live session, pause for two or three minutes. Ask your students to write down everything they can remember from the previous segment and also encourage students to ask questions. This form of retrieval practice is useful because students can identify fairly quickly whether they were able to grasp a concept while also having you there to ask questions in case they find a gap in their knowledge.
After the live session: Create weekly or end-of-module quizzes in Canvas. These quizzes should be low- to no-stakes and can be cumulative in nature as the semester progresses. The objective is for students to have a place to challenge themselves to recall information from different periods of the semester as a self-check exercise. You could also include their participation in these quizzes as part of their participation grade or use it as formative assessment.
Think-Pair-Share
At some point during your live session, ask students a question that involves higher order thinking skills (Bloom’s Taxonomy: application, analysis, evaluation). Ask them to think and write down their answer for one minute. Then they should work with a peer to discuss their answers for two minutes. You could use the buddy system mentioned above or you can create several breakout rooms in Zoom with only 2 people assigned. If you have a large class, you could create larger groups, but not too large. You want to ensure that everyone is heard in the group in the allotted time. You can then ask some or all groups to share their answers with you and you can follow up with an explanation of any misconceptions or clarifications. By asking students to explain their rationale for their answer and also to critique a peer helps students articulate newly formed mental connections.
Think-Pair-Share Another Way
If you are using a classroom response system such as Zoom polling or PollEverywhere, you can ask a conceptual, multiple-choice question to the group (display on a PowerPoint slide for example). Ask students to vote on an answer and then work with a peer to discuss. You can encourage students to change their answers after discussing with their peer, if appropriate. You can then reveal the graph of student responses and use it to create a class discussion.
Minute Papers
This strategy can be used at the beginning or end of your live session. Ask students a question that requires them to reflect on their own learning or to use critical thinking skills. Variations include Muddiest Point/Clearest Point, where students write about a point they don’t yet comprehend or understand very well. Have them write for one minute, later inviting them to share their responses to initiate a class discussion or you can collect all responses as an informal survey to inform future sessions.
Jigsaw Method
This strategy takes a little more planning than the previous ones. An assignment/activity is divided into parts and the class is divided into the same number of teams. Each team is given one part to learn/digest. Then teams are shuffled so that students have to teach other teams their part.
This activity is best explained with visuals. Jennifer Gonzalez’s YouTube video from the Cult of Pedagogy offers a wonderful, visual explanation of this strategy.
Activities to Replace Some Lecture
Strip Sequence
Small bits of information are separated into "strips" so that students can sort the strips into various categories or organize them into a sequence depending on the topic. This strategy encourages discussion of competing ideas, organizations, or order in which a process would take place. In this case, it is often the discussion and sharing of ideas that is the most important outcome of the activity.
In an online course, you can display the bits of randomized information on a slide or create a Google Doc. Students can then work in small groups or pairs to sequence or categorize them.
Concept Map
Concept maps are a visual representation of how certain concepts are related. To use this activity in your live session, identify the key concepts that they need to determine a relationship for. This can also be conducted via a Google Doc. After the activity, ask groups/pairs to share their concept map with the class and create a discussion from the examples shared. The exercise of building an external representation of their mental model helps students examine and strengthen the organization within the model and it can emphasize the possibility of other “correct” answers (Brame, 2016).
Categorizing Grids
Similar to concept maps, this technique has students classify terms, images, questions, equations, etc. into categories that the instructor sets forth. You ask students to quickly categorize the items. Then you can ask for volunteers to share their answers and clarify questions that arise.
How to Get Started with Active Learning
Start off small. Identify one or two active learning strategies that you think would work well with your subject matter. Then begin creating the materials you may need to successfully conduct the activity (group/pair lists, Google docs, etc.).
Create clear, explicit (but brief) instructions to guide your students through the activity. For some activities like the Pause Procedure, not much setup or instruction is needed; but, for others such as Jigsaw, everyone will benefit from having instructions clearly and concisely laid out on a slide and document that they can refer back to.
It is very important to prime your students for active learning. Oftentimes, students will push back when active learning is introduced because it is different than what they are used to and because it requires a higher investment of their focus and energy. When starting a session where you will use active learning, explain to your student what you will be doing and, more importantly, why you have chosen this particular activity.
Please view the videos (Total Duration = 9:06) available in the Incorporating Active Learning Techniques to Engage Students playlist for additional information on active learning.
Supplemental Resources
References
- Berkeley Center for Teaching & Learning. (2020). Active Learning Strategies. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://teaching.berkeley.edu/active-learning-strategies
- Bonwell, C. C., and Eison, J.A. (1991). Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. ASH#-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1, Washington, D.C.: The George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development.
- Brame, C., (2016). Active learning. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved June 1, 2020 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/active-learning/
- Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick. Harvard University Press.
- Handelsman, J., Miller, S., and Pfund, C. (2007). Scientific teaching. New York: W.H. Freeman.
- Karpicke, J. D. (2016). A powerful way to improve learning and memory: Practicing retrieval enhances long-term, meaningful. Psychological Science Agenda.
- Miller, M. (2014). Minds online: Teaching effectively with technology. Harvard University Press.
Content created by
Valerie Dumova and Wei Li, Office of Learning Technology
Jeniffer Obando, WebCampus
Experiencing an issue or need additional support? Contact our OneIT Team by