Active Learning Research

This week I would like to share on-going resources and research in support of active learning in all academic areas. I am fortunate to engage in conversations with faculty frequently on teaching methods and many revolve around how we can continually reflect upon our teaching to create active, authentic experiences for our students in all academic areas. Here are a few resources:

1. Active Learning Library provides a user interface where you can filter active learning methods based on Prep Time Required, Class Size, Formative Feedback, Bloom's Taxonomy, Inclusive Learning, etc.

2. The 2014 article “Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics tested the hypothesis that lecturing maximizes learning and course performance by reviewing 225 studies that reported data comparing student performance in STEM courses under traditional lecturing versus active learning. It was found that active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students.

3. A 2011 article entitled, Improved Learning in a Large-Enrollment Physics measured the learning when taught by 3 hours of traditional lecture given by an experienced highly rated instructor and 3 hours of instruction given by a trained, inexperienced instructor using instruction based on research in cognitive psychology and physics education. The comparison was made between two large sections of an introductory physics course. The authors found increased student attendance, higher engagement, and higher quality outcomes in the section taught using research-based instruction.

4. The effect of active learning versus traditional lecturing on the learning achievement of students was also examined in a 2022 article focused on humanities and social sciences. The authors meta-analyzed 104 studies that used assessment scores to compare the learning achieved by students in humanities and social science programs under active instruction vs lecturing. Student performance on assessment scores was found to be higher by 0.49 standard deviations under active instruction. The beneficial effect of active instruction was found to be higher for subjects such as sociology, psychology, education, and economics.

It seems apparent that offering active learning opportunities for our students regardless of the academic program, or student background provided substantial benefits to their learning. Hopefully, the question of “if” has been resolved and we can focus on the when, how, how much, etc., and methods to collect student response/performance data prior to, during and after active learning. There are institutions dedicated to offering an active student-centric approach to learning that are exploring automated ways to offer and collect active learning data, which provides real-time data dashboards for instructor consideration during learning experiences. Ideally, this is where we should be spending our scarce available time.

References

Prince, M. (2006). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of engineering education, 93 (3), 223-231.

Hernández-de-Menéndez, M., et al. (2019). Active learning in engineering education. A review of fundamentals, best practices and experiences. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing, 13, 909–922.