Defining Active Learning and Choosing a Strategy

DEFINING ACTIVE LEARNING

Active Learning, is any type of learning that requires the learner to be active in the process rather than passive. This can be as simple as answering a question or as complex as solving a case with a team of peers.

The Center for Research on Teaching and Learning at University of Michigan defines Active Learning more technically as:

“a process whereby students [actively] engage in activities, such as reading, writing, discussion, or problem solving that promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of class content” (University of Michigan, CRTL).

In other words, the emphasis is on active engagement, processing and application.

Why would you use an Active Learning Strategy? 

EEG Chart of Brain activity with class times circled. The lines here are flat, representing that the brain is more passive in class than when sleeping.

One week of brain activity: Notice the flattened lines during class, but how much activity happens during study and lab times.

Quite simply, to engage the student in the act of learning more fully. Let’s take a look at some observations from a study by Dr. Eric Mazur, a Harvard professor, and active learning pioneer, to answer that question.

Notice all the spots that are circled on this EEG graph at the right. They are all class periods. And notice also, that most of them are more flatlined than Sleep. They actually look much more similar to the brainwaves for watching TV.  This is passive activity as registered by the brain. There are not a lot of neurons firing there!

Now, look at the chart where it says Lab and Homework or Study. These are brainwaves that show some promise. That’s because by reading, or taking notes, or by working actively on an experiment, the subject is engaging more of their brain and actively trying to learn instead of just passively receiving information. By engaging more of their brain in learning, they are creating more neural pathways, helping them to remember the material better and connect it to other pieces of knowledge that already have or will gain later.

When should you use an Active Learning Strategy?

Not every active learning strategy is suited to every level of learning. For example, it would make no sense to give a first year student an active learning assignment that required evaluation, until you know that they can remember and understand those basic ideas. So, if your learning outcome says, “Students will know…” or “Students will identify…” a Top Hat quiz might be the best active learning strategy. If your learning outcome states “Students will differentiate…” or “Students will argue/defend…” assigning a case to analyze may be more suitable.  As we move through the strategies, we will identify the best fit for students in Bloom’s Taxonomy.

This doesn’t mean that everything has to change overnight! Just like there are levels to learning, there are levels to teaching, too.  As Dr. James Lang reminds us with his book “Small Teaching” the small changes are best. Enacting one small change to your teaching arsenal and then another next semester, and so on, will put you ahead in the long run by creating less stress for you and more interactivity for your students each semester. You also don’t have to use these techniques in every class meeting. The lowest effort ones can be used more frequently. The high effort ones can be used once a week or less. Start slowly and build.

Choosing an Active Learning Strategy

To pick the best active learning strategy for your class and content, look to your learning objectives, your assessment, and Bloom’s Taxonomy. Each learning objective should map to a level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Unlocking which level will help you pick the right activity for the job.

  • Look for the action verb in the learning objective,
  • Match them to the taxonomy (linked above) to determine the level of skill needed to meet the objective, and
  • Use that level of skill to determine which active learning strategies will work best for your objective

The following links describe different active learning strategies including their use cases, their difficulty in setting them up, how to implement them according to the needs of your course:

Review information about Individual Strategies

Level of Difficulty: Low

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels: Knowledge, Comprehension (Reflections could encompass Application and Evaluation)


When people hear Active Learning Strategy, they often think of group work, but there are several active learning strategies that are for individuals.  Metacognition (or thinking about thinking) is a highly effective learning tool for students and can be helped along with active learning strategies that call for self-assessment and reflection. These tools can also be helpful to instructors as they reveal what the students know going in and what they take away at the end of class. If the takeaways don’t match the learning outcomes, there may be issues with understanding that need to be addressed. These strategies include:

  • Quizzes
  • Polls
  • Reflections
  • Minute Papers (Muddiest Point)

The inherent flexibility of these strategies makes them useful for all types of classroom situations: auditorium sized lectures, active learning spaces, online classes and labs.

Review information about Think-Pair Share

Level of Difficulty: Low

Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, and Analysis


What is it?

A low-risk, collaborative active learning strategy that can be used in all sorts of classroom situations. It involves the instructor posing a challenging question, giving them a moment to think about it, collaborate with a neighbor and then share their agreed upon answer with the class.

How Do I Use It?

  • Formulate a good open-ended question that could have several paths to an answer and requires application, analysis, and/or evaluation.
  • Pose the question to the students
  • Give the students one minute to think about the question on their own
  • Have the students discuss their answers with their collaboration partner for several minutes
  • Solicit student comments or take a classroom vote

Variations

Repeated Question

Ask the question, have the students answer on their own through Top Hat or another method, then “pair” to discuss, then answer the question again. Use Top Hat to gauge if any ground was gained through the “pair” portion of the activity.

Think-Pair-Square

Instead of collaborating only with one other person, each pair would choose another pair to form a square for further collaboration on a question before coming back to the full classroom.

Review information about Minute Papers

Level of Difficulty: Low

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level: Knowledge, Comprehension


What is it?

The Minute Paper is an end of class exercise aimed at getting the students to assess and take ownership of their own learning. In addition, it provides feedback for the professor on whether or not the students understood the main points of a lecture or class period.

How do I use it?

  • At the end of a class period, present the class with the following questions:
    • What are the two significant things you learned during this session?
    • What question(s) do you have that still need to be answered?
  • Have the students respond in the format that makes the best sense to you
    • Handout with the questions on it
    • Index cards
    • Discussion Board Post in CarmenCanvas
    • A written assignment in CarmenCanvas
    • An Essay Question in a CarmenCanvas Quiz

Variations

Muddiest Point – The Muddiest Point exercise is a question that can stand alone or be added to this exercise, simply ask students to tell you the biggest thing that they don’t understand. This can be returned to you in any of the formats above.

Review information about Gallery Walks

Level of Difficulty: Moderate

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level: Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation


What is it?

Teams rotate around the classroom, composing answers to questions, as well as giving thought to answers from other groups. Each station has a question that relates to an important class concept. The whole technique closes with a report out of a synthesis of all the answers to a particular question.

How do I use it?

  • Set up one question on the same topic for each station.
  • Better discussions will happen if there is more than one answer or approach to the question.
  • Put the question up on a Word Document or Powerpoint and open each document on the screens in the classroom. (This can also be done with poster paper if you are not in an active learning space with screens)
  • Give each group a set amount of time to answer the question on the document before moving to the next station.
  • When all groups have reached their last station, give each group a set amount of time to sum up all the answers for a report out.
  • Have each group report out a synthesized answer from all the answers listed at their station. This should not just be a list of all the answers, but should communicate solutions that agree, and solutions that conflict.

Variations

Team-Based Learning: Use as a report out method for a TBL session. Especially useful at higher levels of application and evaluation. This can be used for problems or cases that have multiple good solutions and introduce ambiguity to the exercise.

Case Studies: Rather than asking a question, this can be used with case studies. Use a different case study for each station.

Micro-Learning: Use this method to roll out several micro lessons (small units of content that can be digested in 5 minutes or less). Ask students to sum up the most important takeaway at the end rather than answering a question. Then, rather than a synthesis, have students share the top two or three takeaways from each station.

Top Hat: Low stakes review questions could be asked using a CarmenCanvas or Top Hat quiz at the end of the activity, rather than a report out.

Review information about Problem-Based Learning

Level of Difficulty: High

Bloom’s Taxonomy Level: Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation


What is it?

A student-centered approach to learning in which students learn about a subject by working in groups to solve and open-ended problem. Sometimes it’s called Project-Based Learning, but Project-Based Learning is also used to describe the whole class of this type of activity including Authentic Learning and Challenge-Based Learning. Here’s what students will do in a PBL exercise:

  • Examine and define the problem.
  • Explore what they already know about underlying issues related to it.
  • Determine what they need to learn and where they can acquire the information and tools necessary to solve the problem.
  • Evaluate possible ways to solve the problem.
  • Solve the problem.
  • Report on their findings.

Problems can be either short or long, taking multiple class periods or weeks to complete. Depending upon the task set for the students, this can sit a a variety of levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Consider the level of learning you are looking for when creating your project.

How do I use it?

  • Articulate the learning outcomes of the project. What do you want students to know or be able to do as a result of participating in the assignment?
  • Create the problem. Ideally, this will be a real-world situation that resembles something students may encounter in their future careers or lives. Cases are often the basis of PBL activities.
  • Establish ground rules at the beginning to prepare students to work effectively in groups.
  • Introduce students to group processes and do some warm up exercises to allow them to practice assessing both their own work and that of their peers.
  • Consider having students take on different roles or divide up the work up amongst themselves. Alternatively, the project might require students to assume various perspectives, such as those of government officials, local business owners, etc.
  • Establish how you will evaluate and assess the assignment. Consider making the assessments students make of their own work and that of their peers part of the assignment grade.

Variations

Authentic Learning: Applying knowledge to real-world problems that mimic the work of professionals in the field and then report their findings to an audience beyond the classroom.

Challenge-Based Learning: Identify real-life situations or issues and put the students to work on them using collaborative learning. This involves the students finding both the problem and the solution, so the activity is self-directed and typically takes an entire semester to solve. The students then reflect on and publish their findings to a worldwide audience. Some of these projects fail, and that is okay. It’s the research and the findings that are important here.