Active Learning
Active and Cooperative Learning
Faculty surveys, examples, and links to many other sites, compiled
by Ted Panitz of Cape Cod Community College.
Active and Cooperative Learning in the College Classroom
Definitions, techniques, references, and comments for integrating active
and cooperative learning in the college classroom.
Active Learning Centre
Active Learning Centre is a compilation
of self-assessment tests/databases in different areas of knowledge.
All tests follow the same format and are capable of asking either multiple-choice,
matching or essay-type (self-graded) questions. All databases are searchable
by keywords/phrases.
Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom
What is active learning and why is it important? How can active
learning be incorporated in the classroom? What are the barriers?
Active Learning: Getting Students to Work and Think in the Classroom (PDF file)
From Stanford
University's
Speaking of Teaching, Vol. 5, No. 1. Defines
active learning and outlines several techniques you can use to challenge
your students to move beyond memorization to higher levels of understanding.
Active Learning in Higher Education
Active Learning in Higher Education
is the journal of the Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher
Education (ILTHE). It is an international, refereed publication. The
journal is a benefit for ILTHE members but is also available by subscription
to non-members.
Active Learning Online – The ACU Adams Center for Teaching Excellence
This web site presents Active Learning strategies for the classroom
and strategies for online courses.
Active Learning Network
for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP)
The Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian
Action is an international, interagency forum working to improve learning,
accountability and quality across the Humanitarian Sector.
Active Learning: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Helpful Texts
This bibliography has been designed to identify and preview texts
that faculty members can use to enhance their efforts to skillfully
integrate active learning instructional strategies in college and university
classrooms.
The
Active Learning Site
This site supports the scholarship of teaching by providing research-based
resources designed to help faculty use
active learning successfully
in college and university classrooms.
Active Training – Free Tools and Tips
These tools make it easy to use active learning methods with adolescent
and adult learners.
Active
Learning
Many
college teachers today want to move past passive learning to active
earning, to find better ways of engaging students in the learning
process. But many teachers feel a need for help in imagining what to
do, in or out of class, that would constitute a meaningful set of active
learning activities. The model offers a way of conceptualizing the learning
process in a way that may assist teachers in identifying meaningful
forms of active learning.
The Cone of Learning
The best answer
to the question, "What is the most effective method of teaching?"
is that it depends on the goal, the student, the content, and the teacher.
But the next best answer is, "students teaching other students."
Center for the Advancement of Teaching
College faculty
have become increasingly comfortable with Active Learning, which here
means any of a variety of strategies or pedagogical projects designed
to place the primary responsibility for creating and/or applying knowledge
on the shoulders of students.
Center for Teaching
and Learning
An instructional support center dedicated to supporting teaching and
learning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Center for Teaching and Learning Services at the University of Minnesota
There are any number of teaching strategies that can be employed to
actively engage students in the learning process, including group discussions,
problem solving, case studies, role plays, journal writing, and structured
learning groups.
Clark University Active Learning
Read about what our faculty and their student collaborators
have to say about their research endeavors.
Development
Education Program's Active Learning Resources
This short, annotated bibliography is a guide to help you understand
more about the pedagogy behind the interactive learning methods that
shape the Development Education Program's online learning modules and
to help you make the most of these materials. Better yet, we hope that
the information here will help you improve upon the work we have done!
Faculty Development Committee
This site features an award winning teaching tips index from faculty
development at Honolulu Community College.
Foundation
Coalition: Active/Cooperative Learning
A collection of resources compiled by the Foundation Coalition, including
excerpts from videotaped interviews with some of the leading practitioners
of CL in engineering education on different aspects of planning and
implementation.
From Constructivism to Active Learning
...for the computer to bring about a revolution in higher education,
its introduction must be accompanied by improvements in our understanding
of learning and teaching.
Improving Student Learning and College Teaching
By Dr. James Bell, Professor of Psychology at Howard Community College
with help from the HCC Faculty.
Individual
Development and Educational Assessment Center (IDEA)
IDEA has twenty-six, excellent online-papers focused on the improvement
of learning and teaching. Sample topics of these research-based, thoroughly-practical
papers include such topics as
Writing a Syllabus,
Improving
Lectures,
Answering and Asking Questions,
Improving Multiple
Choice and Essay Tests, and
Motivating Students.
Introducing
Active Learning with Movie Clips
More About Active Learning from the Florida State University
Instructional Development Services (PDF file)
The Teaching
at FSU handbook has a list of more active learning techniques and details
on how they can be used in your classroom.
National Teaching and Learning Forum
Provides thoughtful essays and practical articles on learning and teaching,
as well as an online teaching forum.
Principles
of Active Learning
A Keynote Address Presented at the Teaching and Learning and Writing
Across the Curriculum Faculty Development Workshop at Laurentian University.
Resources for Scientists Teaching Science
With a little creativity, active learning can take place in large classes!
Riding the Active Learning Wave
Problem-Based Learning as a Catalyst for Creating Faculty-Librarian
Instructional Partnerships by Michael
Fosmire and Alexius Macklin of Purdue University Libraries.
Teaching 101: Active Learning
The
role of a professor or instructor is to help students learn. How do
students learn? Psychological research suggests that learning is a constructive
process.
University of Kansas Center for Teaching Excellence
Contains useful resources and links to teaching centers
University of New Hampshire Center for Academic Resources
The Center can support you in becoming an active learner -- we can coach
you to become proactive, develop habits of mind, and craft strategic
study skills that will make your academic experience in college interesting
and successful.
University of Oklahoma Ideas on Teaching
Presents a model that offers a way of conceptualizing the learning process
in a way that may assist teachers in identifying meaningful forms of
active learning.
On course
You'll find many resources at this site to support your efforts for
improving student academic success and retention on your campus.
How
do you deal with the details of teaching? (PDF file)
An unscientific test to assess your teaching style with comments from
the Co-Directors
Relative to teaching...
Contains
many useful newsletters on active learning
Active
Learning for The College Classroom
We
provide below a survey of a wide variety of active learning techniques
which can be used to supplement rather than replace lectures. We are
not advocating complete abandonment of lecturing, as both of us still
lecture about half of the class period.
A
Student Participation Rubric
Distributing
the rubric publicly reveals course expectations clearly and engages
students in conscious self assessment.
The
Guided Essay
The
Guided Essay is one way to make reflective judgment visible.
Reciprocal
Classroom Interview
Reciprocal
Classroom Interviews, sometimes called The G.I.F.T. (Group Instructional
Feedback Technique), take place between two colleagues who trust each
other. How to gather information:
Alternative
Strategies and Active Learning
As
you consider various modes of instruction, keep in mind that student
learning depends primarily on what the students do, both in and out
of class, rather than what the teacher does. Your task is to select
activities through which students can master course objectives: lectures,
discussions, written exercises, reading assignments, tests, group work,
individualized instruction, field trips, observations, experiments,
and many other kinds of experiences may be necessary for students to
learn the things you want them to learn.
Research
Summaries
A
consistent theme of faculty at colleges and universities is that they
are not aware of the educational research that currently exists or how
it applies to their teaching. The purpose of this section is to provide
summaries of research articles that can inform classroom practice. Explore
one of the following.
Active
Learning
Good
Practice Encourages Active Learning. Learning is not a spectator sport.
Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers,
memorizing pre-packaged assignments and spitting out answers.
Active
Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom
It
is therefore important to know the nature of active learning, the empirical
research on its use, the common obstacles and barriers that give rise
to faculty members' resistance to interactive instructional techniques,
and how faculty, faculty developers, administrators, and educational
researchers can make real the promise of active learning.
Diagram
of Learning Activities
What
learning activities make a good set of activities? Marilla Svinicki
and Nancy Dixon created this diagram some years ago. The four points
of the circle represent stages in the Kolb model of learning. The activities
toward the center represent more "passive" modes of learning;
those near the periphery are more "active" modes.
Active
Learning
When
selecting teaching/learning activities, teachers must make choices about
HOW they want students to learn. This essay presents a model of ACTIVE
LEARNING that offers specific ways of doing this.
Active
Learning
One
of the major changes to occur in higher education in the last decade
or so is that college faculty members are buying into the idea of active
learning. And when they try it, they generally find that their courses
are more enjoyable (both for the students and for the teacher) and that
students learn more. How does one do this?
Getting
Students Involved in the Classroom (PDF file)
There
is generally no single reason why some students are in varying degrees
uninterested and unwilling to participate in the classroom. Usually
a combination of factors are responsible and the instructor is faced
with diagnosing the problems in each individual class. The following
represents some of the more common causes of student non-involvement.
Active
Learning
If
you want students to do something besides "sit and take notes"
all the time, do you have specific ideas on what else you might do?
Active
Learning (Good Practice Uses Active Learning Techniques )
Active
Learning includes a range of teaching and learning activities. These
strategies, supported by decades of classroom research, may be thought
of as a continuum from low risk to high risk for both teachers and students.
Such a continuum may include (but not be limited to) strategies such
as some of the following:
Active
Learning Strategies for Humanities Curricula
There are a few Active Learning Strategies.
Active
Learning
The
benefits to using such activities are many. They include improved critical
thinking skills, increased retention and transfer of new information,
increased motivation, and improved interpersonal skills.
Background and definitions and Techniques in Active Learning
Because
these techniques are aimed at individual students, they can very easily
be used without interrupting the flow of the class. These exercises
are particularly useful in providing the instructor with feedback concerning
student understanding and retention of material.
Authentic Learning
Authentic
learning allows students to explore, discover, discuss, and meaningfully
construct concepts and relationships in contexts that involve real-world
problems and projects that are relevant and interesting to the learner.
Studying the Adult Learner
Knowles believes that the adult learner brings life experiences to learning,
incorporating and complementing the cognitive abilities of Piaget's
adolescent. If you examine personal and cognitive development and compare
teaching approaches, you see that children tend to be dependent learners,
whereas adults need to be independent and exercise control.
Returning Adults; Understanding adults returning to school
Adults
returning to education display a marked difference among themselves.
Most older adults in higher education experience self-consciousness
and anxiety about their age and performance. They may feel more obligation
to please the instructor than younger students do. They may be too modest
about their own abilities and experiences. They may seek more reassurance
from instructors, and they may need to verbalize more than younger students
do.
Active Learning
The
terms "active learning," "experiential learning,"
and "hands-on learning" are often used interchangeably. In
this Digest, the term "active learning" will be used to encompass
these and similar terms, focusing on active and participative learning
as opposed to more passive forms of learning.
Enhancing Student Learning: Intellectual, Social and Emotional Integration
The
need to focus on holistic learning--the integration of intellectual,
social, and emotional aspects of undergraduate student learning--has
been voiced periodically throughout the last half century and recent
research on student experience and college impact has provided additional
fuel to these arguments.
Turning Teaching Into Learning;The Role of Student Responsibility in
the Collegiate Experience
As colleges have struggled to extend opportunities, an accompanying
expectation for students to assume responsibility for their own education
often has been lacking. Institutions must work to create a climate in
which all students feel welcome and able to fully participate. It is
equally important to nurture an ethic that demands student commitment
and promotes student responsibility.
Any Questions?
(PDF file)
"What's
the volume?" has only one possible correct answer, obtained by
mechanically substituting values into a formula. "Do you have any
questions?" is even less productive: the leaden silence that usually
follows makes it clear that the answer for most students is always "No,"
whether or not they understand the material.
How about a Quick One?
Of
all instructional methods, lecturing is the most common, the easiest,
and the least effective.
Active Learning on the Web
For
a year and a half now I've been experimenting with a variety of ways
of teaching with the Web. One format that is both simple to implement
and highly effective is something I named a webquest. While the definition
of a webquest is still a bit slippery, it is at its heart a technique
for engaging students in active learning which uses the web and other
resources as they strive to understand a topic.
Learning...Teaching...Reading (PDF file)
The
overriding goal of this report is to ensure that every child has well-prepared
and capable teachers and school administrators..... (A report)
