Active Learning

Traditional instruction applies a knowledge transmission model in which knowledge is passed along intact from teacher to student. It has generally been assumed that the best way to transfer information via this route is through lecture. But, as philosopher, Emmanuel Kant reportedly quipped, “Lecture is the process by which the faculties’ notes become the students’ notes without passing through the heads of either.” Recent discoveries about how people learn confirm that the lecture method is effective only for low level outcomes such as rote learning and memorization.

Active Learning originates in a philosophy of instruction that consistently remains focused on student learning. This approach originates in two fundamental beliefs: 1. when students can learn something more effectively without direct instruction, then its time for the teacher to step aside, and 2. just because something is taught does not guarantee that it is being learned. From these perspectives, the principal work of the teacher occurs during the pre-planning stage. This is when teachers design and plan for learning experiences that challenge students to become directly responsible for their own learning though a variety of instructional strategies.

Observe an Active Learning classroom and you will witness a beehive of student commotion that offers frequent, engaging, and reflective opportunities for them to generate their own meaning from classroom experiences. This is because the types of instructional approaches that support an Active Learning environment generally require students to work in groups, engage in thoughtful dialogue with peers, express viewpoints, and reflect on their own levels of learning. In this context, teachers function as designers, questioners, orchestrators, problem-posers, and monitors of student performance. When careful instructional decision-making occurs, the likely outcome is an active learning environment in which collaboration among and between students and teachers is its most conspicuous quality. As B.B. King, the great blues guitarist once said, “The beautiful thing about learning is nobody can take it away from you.”

Implementation

 

1. The central ingredient for success with Active Learning is what happens before the lesson is implemented. The planning phase must consistently incorporate information about the nature of the student, the topic under investigation, and the educational context in reaching decisions about what to teach and how to teach it. As always, the teacher’s subjective judgments based on prior teaching experience are factored into the above considerations.
2. As with all standards-based lessons, the natural starting point is to determine the desired student Learning Expectations and the topics to which they are related.
3. Depending on teacher preferences the next steps would be to think about:

• Content knowledge associated with this topic and its natural subtopics.
• Particular instructional strategies that lend themselves to this particular educational context (What’s the day of the week, group size, the room configuration, a reasonable amount of time to spend exploring this topic, etc.?).
• Hands-on activities that would enhance the lesson.
• Interesting websites for exploring this concept.
• Questions to successfully guide student thinking and expected student responses.

 

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Classroom Management

 

1. Introduce the Active Learning framework in terms of activities and time frames:

• Open the Lesson: Review the methods will be used to determine prior knowledge and engage students in the topic.
• Develop the Lesson: Describe the activities that will be used to introduce new information and encourage students to personally interact with the topic.
• Close the lesson: Present activities that will help students to make connections to previous lessons and find links among different elements of this lesson.