Active Learning, Interaction, and Engagement

What is Active Learning and Why is it Important? 

Active learning is based on the premise that students learn best when they are actively engaged in the course and can contribute to the process and define their learning experience. Research suggests that students learn better when they are an active part of the learning process. When designing a course, it’s important to place the student at the center of the learning experience. It is crucial to intentionally design your online/blended course using a student-centered approach rather than an instructor-centered approach. When preparing a face-to-face course, you may think about what you are doing, saying, and how you are interacting with the content and students.

Active Learning is a great way to move from traditional teaching practices into designing courses that allow the students to be more actively connected with their own learning process. When designing your online course, consider how you would like your students to interact with you, other students, the content, and themselves throughout your course. If you are designing a blended course or a course with a live attribute, you will also want to carefully consider which interactions will occur synchronously, asynchronously, or both. Watch the video below to learn how instructors at the University of Minnesota view active learning (1:31).

Why Use Active Learning (Time 1:31) by the Center for Educational Innovation - University of Minnesota Links to an external site.

"Students learn best when they are actively engaged and can contribute to the process.

Active Learning vs. Passive Learning

Active learning: Bonwell and Eison (1991) defined strategies that promote active learning as “instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing” (p. iii). Felder and Brent (2009) defined active learning as “anything course-related that all students in a class session are called upon to do other than simply watching, listening and taking notes” (p. 2).  
 
Passive learning: With passive learning, the instruction and the content - whether delivered via lecture, assigned readings, or videos - are the focus of the lesson. Students are asked to understand the material through their own methods. Rather than actively constructing knowledge, in passive learning, instructors, or the materials they provide, pass the information to students, and the students are expected to internalize the ideas in their own ways (Jones, 2020). 

Effective course design should be centered around activities that encourage the active process and transfer of new information rather than the passive presentation of content. Harrisson (2006) suggests the following strategies for developing learner-centered instruction:

  • Know your students, their starting point, their preconceptions, and their prior knowledge.
  • Encourage self-directed learning allowing students to make choices and take responsibility for their own learning.
  • Develop student self-awareness (metacognition) about their own learning while encouraging reflection, integration, and critical thinking.
  • Engage students in active experiential learning.
  • Value interactivity by providing opportunities for student-student, student-instructor, student-content, and student-self interactions.
  • Give and receive feedback often: student-student, student-faculty, faculty-student.
  • Keep the focus of instruction on learning and recognize your role as the facilitator of learning.

Types of Interaction

Explore the different types of interactions and examples below and allow the ideas to influence the design of your course. The goal is to be intentional in creating experiences that meet the needs of varied learners and also allow students to have a variety of interactions from all levels.