What is ‘Active Learning’?
To find out, I went to the experts: my kids.
When I first started out as a Learning Designer, I was wondering a lot about how real, active, meaningful learning can actually happen online. Lucky for me, I had the perfect observation deck at home: my kids.
Whenever I run a Learning Design workshop, I share a story about my kids. It’s a story that helps to illustrate the process of active learning and it’s easy to apply to online learning experiences where students are intrinsically motivated and are having fun.
Here, I relate that story in five chapters and give you one way of applying it in your course design:
Chapter 1: The yellow lines
One afternoon, as I was driving home on the highway with my daughters, we went through the yellow lines that were painted on the road. The loud thudding sound of tyres on bumps caught their attention and my 9-year-old daughter, N, started to ask: “Why would they paint these noisy lines?” I explained that it was to warn us to slow down.
Chapter 2: The discussion
But my 11-year-old, R, had a different idea. She believed that the lines weren’t just a warning sign, they were also there to help the car slow down naturally. Without missing a beat, she started to explain to her little sister about friction.
Chapter 3: The ball race
When we got home, they started to experiment with various kinds of balls (marbles, plastic balls and tennis balls). They rolled the balls on different surfaces and discovered that the speed of the balls differed depending on the surfaces they ran it through and the material of the balls.
Chapter 4: The sloping cardboard challenge
On a different day, they used sloping cardboard and had a car race. At this point, I reminded them about the discussion that they had about the yellow lines and they quickly gathered masking tape and playdough to make the cars slow down before reaching the end of the slope.
Chapter 5: The tricycle ride
A few weeks after that, N was playing with her little sister outside. Her little sister, K, was struggling to cycle her tricycle on the grass. N told her to ride on the porch floor and explained to her little sister about friction.
As I reflected on these learning chapters, I realized that all of them happened without me giving much explanation or help. And then it hit me; it happened naturally, actively, to the point that my children didn’t even realise they were learning about friction — and it was the same process that all of us use every day to solve problems: experimentation and exploration.
I soon learned that in Learning Design, this is what we call ‘Active Learning’.
It’s how I’d like learning to happen in the courses that I design. So I began finding ways to make it happen.
During this time, I happened to be building an Islamic Finance course for a Malaysian university. What we received from the subject matter expert (SME) was a bunch of videos to be uploaded — but this was a very ‘passive’ way of learning. I put my ‘active’ learning hat on, and for weeks, I extracted information from those videos.
In the end, we came up with brand-new content which still included useful portions of those videos, but this time we added motion graphics, diagrams, and a comic strip. It was a great set-up to the real-world problem-solving activity that was assigned after the video.
I watched as the course went live and the learners came alive. It was my first taste of active learning and it acted as a catalyst to the rest of my Learning Design journey. I’ve never looked back since.
So, how exactly does a Learning Designer use Active Learning?
Active Learning exists. Any educator can tell you that. But how do we bring that experience online? Are the cold halls of the Internet and the anonymity of the online classroom any place for truly ‘active’ learning? I would argue, yes.
Here is an example. Let’s imagine I’m going to teach a course called ‘Friction for Dummies’. My students are going to be people who have little to no knowledge of the topic.
Let’s think back to Chapter 1: The ‘yellow lines’ — this is the part where I need to spark curiosity. It could be in the form of a super short but engaging video that would get the students craving some answers. Or, better, yet, a video that sparks ideas and gets them to crave a discussion. (This could also be an image, a comic or an infographic).
I can use this video:
It’s short, engaging, interesting and, most importantly — it will excite the students and kickstart their thinking. Be careful, though, because a video technique can easily become passive learning when it only requires students to watch and answer some quiz questions.
Done well, the video technique activates Chapter 2: The discussion — this is where students should start interacting, discussing and sharing ideas related to the video above. It’s an open-ended discussion and there shouldn’t be any right or wrong answers.
For this part, I could prompt them with questions which can’t be answered by watching the video. Or, I could get the students to share their own experiences which are related to friction. For example:
Have you ever experienced a challenge due to friction in your life? Share it with us. (This could be in the form of images, videos, or just text.)
Here’s what the responses may look like:
“The soles of my shoes were worn out for some time and I was getting funny looks because of the way that I was walking to avoid slipping.”
“Oh, poor you! I have the same problem too. My shoes are biodegradable, though, so I’m not surprised.”
“I thought I was the only one.. and guess what — I even tried sticking some plasticine to the soles of my shoes, but it didn’t really help.”
…and the thread goes on. The longer the thread goes, the more ideas and solutions are posted. And that’s why we asked an open-ended question related to life experiences: This way, learners are less constrained and they feel more confident talking about a topic that they’re unfamiliar with (because everyone is an expert of their own experiences).
Once they have discussed and expanded their ideas about friction, Chapters 3 and 4 come into play: together, my kids’ ball race and sloping cardboard challenge make up the experimentation phase. From a course-building perspective, these are engaging, fun activities that the students can actively participate in.
What I would usually do in this section is to let the students experiment and explore solutions for the challenges that they had shared in the previous activity. For example:
A Slippery Hunt:
Think of the challenge that you posted earlier. Did you manage to overcome it?
• If you have, how did you experiment to find the solution?
• If you haven’t, how would you experiment to try and solve it?
Here, they will start to see friction from many different perspectives. Students can choose different materials or ways to do it so that it’s personalised and they feel a sense of ownership. This is what we call ‘experiential learning’ as Learning Designers.
At this point, the course would go into a whole new set of modules related to friction which I won’t cover in this blog post. But ultimately, the entire course would culminate in a final project. That’s where the final chapter comes in — Chapter 5: The tricycle ride.
This is the crucial moment when the learner takes what they’ve acquired and applies it elsewhere. For my kids, this happened naturally through the tricycle ride. But how can we create the right conditions when the learning is shifted online?
A final project would come in handy in this process, where the student applies their knowledge in a project of their own choice. The final product can be something they created or a problem that they solved. For example:
Cheater, cheater, pumpkin-eater
Think of all the games that you used to play when you were a kid. Games such as spinning tops, water slide racing, marbles, conkers, and more.
With what you have learned about friction, how would you use friction to cheat in any of these games? Tell us what the game is called, explain how it is played and tell us how friction is involved.
Note: If you’ve already tried this out and it worked, record and share a video so that everyone else can learn from your hoodwinking ways ;)
Here’s a sample response:
Game: Marbles
How to play it: A circle is drawn on the ground. Each player uses their marble to ‘knock’ the other marbles out of the circle.
Friction concept applied: The more slippery the object is, the lower the friction.
How to cheat: I’m going to dip my marble in oil so that it moves faster.
Students really get to have fun with this one. Chances are, they weren’t expecting to be asked to find all the mischievous ways they could cheat at their childhood games. And all of this fun wouldn’t be going to waste — I’d exploit the situation further by slipping in a follow-up question to encourage interaction:
Take a look at your friends’ responses above. Would you use any of these tricks, or do you think that they wouldn’t work? If you don’t think they will work, reply on their post and tell them why.
When students are asked to challenge each other’s ideas, they are given the space to explain concepts to one another and solidify their own knowledge. They would all improve, just like R, who experimented with N, who later helped her little sister, K, to ride her tricycle. This is active learning at work; it’s what I want my learners to experience.
I’ve used this approach in different courses and it has become one of the strategies that has worked for me, time and again. My children have also become my ‘learning subjects’ and my best source of inspiration ever since. I hope that you’ll find your own style of designing active learning experiences!
Before I end, I will leave you with this thought. It’s one of my responses to a learning activity in Learning design basics: pedagogy into practice:
Don’t grow your plant in a pot, grow it on a big field so it can grow as big as it can :)
