Active learning

Active learning is a general approach to designing educational interactions that focuses on having the learner be active in the learning process instead of a passive recipient, such as with watching a video or a lecture.

Definition

Active learning is the approach to learning where learners are kept active in the learning experience. This is contrasted by passive learning, in which learners passively receive information or participate by sitting and observing during a learning experience. For active learning to occur, some additional amount of effort other than simply being present must be made by the learner to complete educational activities.

Active learning places the responsibility for learning and activity on the learner, instead of the instructor or the educational media doing all the work.

Student-centered learning is a similar term that is often used to describe active learning in which the student or participant's activity and interests are the focus of the activity, rather than a teacher or content being the focus.

Additional Information

Effort is the main concept that defines whether an activity is active learning. A learner must actually do something in an active learning experience to progress in the activity. This is in contrast to passive learning, where learners are just consuming information or watching media and lectures. Instead, in active learning, the learner's efforts and their work products that they make are the main ways that learning occurs - they learn by doing.

Another aspect that is common to active learning is that there is often no single correct answer. This is also often referred to as open-ended learning, or that there is no one way or single perspective for completing an educational exercise. With this definition of open learning in mind, an educational product that uses active learning cannot be completed without participation and effort on part of the learner. The learner is expected to actively participate in and complete the exercise.

Active learning involves using knowledge and facts, practicing skills, and interacting with other learners, the instructor, and technologies. Active learning prioritizes high levels of engagement and effort on part of the learner in the activity.

Active learning and student-centered approaches prioritize student interactivity and the responsibility for performing tasks is on the learner. In other words, for an activity to be seen as active, it needs to require the learner to do something more than just be present in a class, observe a lecture, watch a video, simply memorize facts, or otherwise passively participate in the exercise.

There are many frameworks and pedagogical approaches for educational design that are often used by designers for enabling active learning among participants. Each active learning approach provides a blueprint for how to design active learning as they set out a list of principles that designers should follow to make sure that interactions among learners, teachers, and technology promote effort and memorable experiences among the learners.

Common active learning frameworks:

• Case-Based Learning
• Game-Based Learning
• Problem-Based Learning
• Project-Based Learning
• Scenario-Based Learning

An active learning framework is a set of basic guidelines and suggestions for achieving learning via active engagement of the learner. These frameworks are each based on learning theories that suggest that learning occurs more effectively if learners are actively engaged in the process. This is particularly true for learning objectives related to performing skills or tasks, as it is far easier to learn how to do a task by doing that task - instead of simply talking about or consuming information about the task, as is common in passive learning.

Tips and Tricks

• The research on educational effectiveness has repeatedly shown that active learning often outperforms passive learning, especially when participants are learning how to do skills, tasks, or procedures. Active learning also helps maintain high levels of engagement, interest, motivation, and satisfaction with the learning experience, and thus keeping the attention of the learners.
• Think of how your learners might stay engaged in the learning product. Think about what engagement, participation, and effort from the learner look like, and what kind of ways these might be evidenced if you were collecting data.
• Consider how your learners use informational resources and observe media or lectures. If you find yourself having them just watch video, lectures, or even read text for the whole activity, you are more likely building a passive learning activity. Think about what else you could be doing to have the learners have more effort to do something, specifically something related to the learning objective.
• It always helps to take a step back and think about what the learners are specifically doing in a learning product. What are the verbs that you can use to describe what they do? If these verbs are not having the learner actively creating or interacting, then it is likely more passive learning in scope.

Related Concepts

• Student-centered learning
• Passive learning
• Design
• Interactions and learning activities
• Case-Based Learning
• Game-Based Learning
• Problem-Based Learning
• Project-Based Learning
• Scenario-Based Learning

Examples

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External Resources

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