LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Active Learning: Classrooms
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Learning is active in all of these environments except for the Environment for Delivering Knowledge. Classrooms, lecture halls, and auditoria tend to support a passive learning scenario.... Scott-Webber states, “If individuals need to ‘own their own knowledge,’ then the only reasonable method is providing opportunities for everyone to experience and build knowledge for themselves. It takes a combination of settings to actualize ownership and they include a minimum application of sociofugal layouts and more sociopetal ones.” Sociofugal arrangements minimize eye contact between individuals (for example, rows of church pews), while sociopetal arrangements facilitate eye contact (people sitting in a circle of center-facing chairs).
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Steve Stanley, president of Analyze and Apply, describes active learning modules: “Imagine a classroom ten years from now. It might look something like this: Learners are meeting in teams discussing the problem they are trying to solve. The project may be seated in any of these […] roles: citizen, worker, or parent. They will not be able to complete the project without learning new or activating prior skills from any combination of curricular areas. The teams will analyze the topic, formulate questions, identify resources, assign team members to locate, gather and otherwise manage information, report back to the team, divide the responsibilities, and ultimately complete the project.”
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This text critically synthesizes published writing and research on active learning. In particular, the following four major issues are examined: (1) What is active learning and why is it important? (2) How can active learning be incorporated in the classroom? (3) What are the barriers? and (4) What conclusions should be drawn and recommendations made? An extensive bibliography of current resources is provided.
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Role-play is another form of active learning for students. For example, when students have a unit on travel, they can transform their classroom into an imaginary airport, whereby the students act out various roles that this scenario involves.
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In retrospect, it appears that previous classroom initiatives and written materials about active learning have all too often been isolated and fragmented. The resulting pedagogical efforts have therefore lacked coherence, and the goal of interactive classrooms has remained unfulfilled. Through the coordinated efforts of individual faculty, faculty developers, academic administrators, and educational researchers... higher education in the coming decade CAN make real the promise of active learning!
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