Active Learning

Learning is never a passive activity. During lectures, a student is expected to listen attentively and take notes. In a seminar, students are supposed to actively participate in discussion. In recent years, however, a growing body of research suggests that students learn more when they are engaged in more active forms of learning.

Active learning is a phrase with multiple meanings. It can refer to any "hands-on" activity, such as taking part in a debate or engaging in a role playing exercise or keeping a journal. But the most effective forms of active learning involve a vigorous process of inquiry, exploration, and problem-solving.

In inquiry-based forms of active learning, the focus shifts away from acquiring information and mastering content, and instead focuses on higher-order skills: research skills, analytical and synthetic skills, and presentation skills. It builds on the idea expressed in the adage: "Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand."

Rather than treating the instructor as a dispenser of knowledge and the student as recipient, an inquiry-based approach treats the student as an investigator, researcher, and problem-solver.

Some students resist active learning, preferring approaches that do not require active engagement. These students favor forms of learning that are instructor initiated, directed, and guided. But recent research suggests that active inquiry is a more effective way of promoting cognitive development because it encourages students to take part in a process of investigation, and to make inferences and draw conclusions (or as a constructivist theories of teaching and learning put it, to formulate their own knowledge structure).

By engaging in active inquiry, students take part in a research or problem-solving process that is similar to that undertaken by scholars in a particular discipline. They discover how scholars come to know what they know. They engage in authentic forms of investigation.