Education Shortform
Active Learning
In a nutshell…
Active learning is a term for tasks that involve the students doing something, rather than sitting and listening to an instructor talking.
Of course, it’s a little difficult to define what that ‘something’ should be.
What counts as active?
If listening to a talk isn’t considered active, then is reading? What about filling in a worksheet?
There is near universal agreement that active learning is a good thing, but defining it is another matter.
A pragmatic approach is to ask, ‘what does the learner need to do?’ If the teacher/instructor is doing most of the work, then the task is probably not an example of active learning.
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This is one of a series of shortform education articles. You can download a simplified summary of my ‘A–Z of Educational concepts’ here.
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