Center for Teaching and Learning

"Active learning" is a general term that describes any time that students get to learn something by performing an activity in class- such as answering a poll question, think-pair-sharing, working in small groups on a worksheet, role playing as fictional character, simulating how to respond to a historical crisis, creating a concept map to show how various ideas connect, etc.

At its best, active learning inspires student learning by asking them to apply, discuss, and reflect upon the course material.

Active learning is typically defined in comparison to “passive learning” experiences, in which students learn by listening to, watching, or reading a lesson.

Active and passive learning experiences are both crucial for student learning.

While every class is different, and there’s no single perfect number for how much active learning yields the best results, there are a couple rules of thumb to keep in mind:

• Try to include at least 2-3 activities per class; and/or
• Try to aim to spend 40-60% of class time on active learning exercises.

• Some of our favorite active learning strategies
• List of active learning techniques

• One of the easiest ways to incorporate active learning is to add 1-3 multiple choice “anonymous poll” questions into each class session.
• Using Echo360 to ask your students polling questions allows you to give students points for participating during in-class activities, incentivizing student attendance and engagement. Read the guidance on how to set up anonymous polling using Echo360.
• Generally speaking, poll questions can be designed as:
  • “Check up” questions to see if students are following along, in which you ask them a question they should be able to answer correctly if they understand the skill or concept you were just lecturing about, or 
  • Extension (or prediction) questions in which you ask them to tackle a concept or skill you haven’t yet taught them.

Recent evidence indicates that including extension questions in which students are asked to construct their understanding beyond what they’ve been taught is a particularly effective application of active learning (Menekse et al., 2013; Chi et al., 2014; Wiggins et al., 2017; Smith G, 2020.)