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Active Learning: Methods
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The use of active learning in education is not a new idea. In fact, it was most certainly the first method of education used by mankind. The quickest and most efficient method of training the young in a hunter/gatherer society, particularly in one where survival is a struggle, is to allow the young to watch and then mimic the behavior of their elders. Lecturing is not practical. As the first human societies were of the hunter/gather variety, this appears to be how education originated in humanity. Lecturing developed much later after cities and formal institutions of education were established.
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Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) suggest that fifty years of empirical data does not support those using active learning methods early in the learning process. In the past few years Outcome-based education policy has begun to limit instructors to only using those techniques that have been shown to be effective. In the United States for instance, the No Child Left Behind Act requires those developing instruction to show evidence of its "effectiveness".
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Faculty developers can help stimulate and support faculty members' efforts to change by highlighting the instructional importance of active learning in the newsletters and publications they distribute. Further, the use of active learning should become both the subject matter of faculty development workshops and the instructional method used to facilitate such programs. And it is important that faculty developers recognize the need to provide follow-up to, and support for, faculty members' efforts to change.
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While experimental research continues to show the usefulness of active learning, descriptive research indicates little application of active learning methods. Project SPAN (Social Studies Priorities, Practices, and Needs) described the current status of social studies and identified problems for social studies in the 1980s. The report showed that relatively little use is made of such active learning methods as inquiry, discovery, community-based learning, and simulations.
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Examples of active learning methods include, but are not limited to, collaborative learning, problem-based learning, case methods, course projects, simulations, and technology uses. Grants are intended to encourage greater student engagement with critical thinking and higher levels of learning … analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information … in contrast to absorption
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This study examines the evidence for the effectiveness of active learning. It defines the common forms of active learning most relevant for engineering faculty and critically examines the core element of each method. It is found that there is broad but even support for the
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