What is Active Learning

what is active learning first Active Learning involves teaching techniques that are something other than straight lecture second Active Learning is not an entire project or assignment but much smaller task you give your students however project or assignment can have several Active Learning pieces within it third in order to consider something Active Learning students must must be doing something including discovering processing and applying information not just listening to lecture or reading PowerPoint Active Learning can take many different forms and instructors often use different strategies in face-to-face in online classes due to their differing approaches to teaching and learning for example in classroom the instructor might ask each student to turn to their neighbor and discuss particular Topic in an online course the same exercise can be accomplished using discussion thread document share in or instant messaging the idea is the same but the approach is different so what about these examples are considered Active Learning in our face-to-face class example Simply Having students turn to their neighbor and discuss topic is active learning in the online course having two students discuss the same topic via discussion thread is active learning as well research shows that students learn more when they're engaged in active learning it's important to remember that lecture does have its place in both face-to-face and online environments however during Active Learning students are involved in much more than just reading or listening and more emphasis is placed on higher order thinking skills such as analysis synthesis and evaluation further research is shown that students retain 70% of what they say and write and they retain 90% of what they do compare this with the fact that students retain only 10% of what they read and 20% of what they hear and you'll start to understand why active learn is so important now that we have an understanding of what Active Learning is and why we should implement it let's look at some specific examples to give you clearer picture of what constitutes Active Learning and practice let's take the example of small group discussion in face-to-face setting you might group students up and ask them to discuss particular topic while this alone is active learning you can add to the exercise by asking each group to present their findings to the class in the form of standard presentation radio or TV commercial or comedy skit now let's look at small group discussion in an online course you can group students into separate discussion threads and have them discuss particular topic again this alone can be considered Active Learning but you can add to the exercise by having students present their findings using various Web 2.0 tools such as recording presentation with PowerPoint or prey submitting voice thread with audio and series of images that relate to the topic or present their Topic in story format you using Google Maps as you can see the possibilities are virtually Limitless so be creative both our face-to-face and online Active Learning examples covered the higher order thinking skills of analysis and synthesis but what about evaluation in this example it would be quite easy to hold peer review of each presentation in face-to-face class you can simply have students give their opinions on how appropriate each group's observations were and how well they presented the information this should spur more ation with the guidance of the instructor in an online course peer reviews can be held using simple discussion thread or voice thread so what about these examples are considered Active Learning in our face-to-face and online class examples the small group discussion is active learning as is the preparation for the presentation the presentation itself and the peer review of the presentation each step in the process is itself distinct active learning strategy since students retain more information during Active Learning simply stated Active Learning equals Better Learning