Active Learning

Answer: Active learning takes many forms and can include demonstrated action (doing) or action that is less visible (thinking). Action is not restricted to group activities or the specific performance of a specific task (demonstration). Evidence of active learning in the online course usually takes the form of written text, although many courses require online presentations or other deliverables.

We ask you to think about what you want students to do (a type of action), how you want them to interact with the content (a type of action), how you want them to interact with others (more action), what deliverable you want students to produce (a type of action), and how you want the deliverable presented (action, again). Most importantly, how do you want students to think deeply about the content or apply the content to novel situations.

Planning activities that require students to interact with the content, the instructor, and/ or other students is key to active internalization of course concepts. Requiring students to reflect and verbalize their thoughts is also an important step to better understanding of content.

Redefining Course Activities.

One way to think about active learning is to think about activities that focus more on process and less on product. Active learning is an attempt to use certain processes to allow students to explore content in ways other than having the content presented to them. Active learning moves students from passive recipients to more active participants with varied ways to interpret and internalize information. Active learning strategies are not discipline-specific and encourage students to begin to understand their personal role in learning.

Assignments requiring interaction with the instructor or other students provide more potential for active learning than assignments where students read information or view a web page. Creating active learning online requires attention to the planning and execution of the activity as well as the tools used to complete the activity. Here are two general strategies that may be used to create more active learning.

Plan Activities Requiring Communication.

Activities using online tools such as chat or discussion boards can be coupled with strategies such as brainstorming, role playing, debates, and a variety of other techniques. Selective use of appropriate tools, strategies, and assessment techniques can make active participation a requirement for success in the class.

Activities that require communication between students or between a student and the instructor and require a final product are another example to increase interaction. Basing these activities on peer collaboration and cooperation may increase motivation and yield richer student products. By requiring production and communication in a single activity, students must interact with their peers and the content to complete the activity.

Implications for Practice.

Planning for process-oriented activities moves learning to more active models. We want our students to think deeply about the content and to apply the content to different situations. Plan activities that require responses, reflections, analysis, synthesis, application, and evaluation. Require multiple drafts with firm deadlines and interaction with others. Make students work in groups and depend upon the group for a portion of the assignment. Teach students that learning is hard work but that it does not need to be boring or laborious. Make them think and make them reveal what they think about.

Activities to Encourage Active Learning.

Projects.

Face-to-face instructors often use projects to increase interaction and active learning in classrooms. Distance educators can do similar projects. Distance students can easily develop projects to be presented to the entire class. The tools available through Blackboard allow students to upload presentations with supporting documents and notes for review by the class. Many instructors include some type of peer critique in this process. A valuable way to do this is to require peer review and require the original author to accommodate this feedback into the final product, to be submitted for a final grade to you.

Webquests and other activities requiring students to investigate and research web-based sources is another project that can increase active learning. Assignments can be as simple as locating and reviewing specific websites or as complicated as webquests. Bernie Dodge, the creator of the webquest, actively maintains a website devoted to webquests at: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/

Role Plays.

Role playing is a useful strategy to help students understand real-world applications of concepts. Role playing allows students to practice in a supportive environment before application outside the classroom. One way to think about role playing is to think of it as case-based or problem-based teaching with assigned roles to promote interaction and cooperation. Case studies or problems can be presented without requiring interaction from the students. Actively involving students as players in the drama requires participation, interaction, and cooperation.

To plan for a role play, your first step is to consider the set up. You, as instructor, will develop a vignette or scenario for students to respond to or solve. Use the set up to present controversial topics that require students to take a specific stance through their role. As the online instructor, you have a great amount of flexibility with how the actual role play is completed. Three examples are presented below but in no way outline all of the ways that role-play activities can be integrated into the online classroom.

• Discussion Board - The set up is presented to small groups within the discussion board. Groups assign roles and use the discussion board to have a hypothetical conversation on the topic.
• Assignment - Students are assigned or select groups to discuss the topic. Groups communicate by defined methods to create a single script of the role play to return to the instructor
• Assignment - After discussing the case, you are to write a one-page essay from the point of view of X - defend your position.

Jigsaw.

Jigsaw activities are borrowed from face-to-face cooperative learning techniques. In this approach, different individuals in a group seek out specific information to be shared with the original group. In the face-to-face world, you usually place all students researching a particular topic into a secondary group to share findings. Once the information is available, individuals report back to their original group with the information.

Using a discussion board, you could assign students to groups researching or investigating the same problem. The groups would assign tasks to group members (structure from the instructor facilitates this process) and then individuals with specific tasks could meet as groups in the discussion board (create these secondary group locations before the activity). The secondary groups investigate and share information until they believe they have a good response to their portion of the assignment. Individuals then go back to the original group's location on the discussion board to post their information.

Think/ Pair/ Share.

Students are paired with a classmate to summarize what they have learned, to answer a question, or to consider application of a class concept in the real world. The intent is to engage individuals, pairs, and the entire class. To set this up, allow some time for personal reflection on the topic. After reflection, pairs are to collaborate to come up with a common response. These common responses are posted to the discussion board.

These are just a few of numerous ways to add active learning to the online classroom.

Virtual Resource Site for Teaching with Technology.

Compilation of teaching and learning activities organized to explain how technology might be used to accomplish certain learning activities. Developed and maintained by the University of Maryland University College. http://www.umuc.edu/virtualteaching/module1/strategies.html

See also...

Collaboration

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