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Harvard Magazine, March/April 2012

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In 1990, after seven years of teaching at Harvard, Eric Mazur, now Balkanski professor of physics and applied physics, was delivering clear, polished lectures and demonstrations and getting high student evaluations for his introductory Physics 11 course, populated mainly by premed and engineering students who were successfully solving complicated problems. Then he discovered that his success as a teacher "was a complete illusion, a house of cards."

The epiphany came via an article in the American Journal of Physics by Arizona State professor David Hestenes. He had devised a very simple test, couched in everyday language, to check students' understanding of one of the most fundamental concepts of physics-force-and had administered it to thousands of undergraduates in the southwestern United States. Astonishingly, the test showed that their introductory courses had taught them "next to nothing," says Mazur: "After a semester of physics, they still held the same misconceptions as they had at the beginning of the term."

The students had improved at handling equations and formulas, he explains, but when it came to understanding "what the real meanings of these things are, they basically reverted to Aristotelian logic-thousands of years back." For example, they could recite Newton's Third Law and apply it to numerical problems, but when asked about a real-world event like a collision between a heavy truck and a light car, many firmly declared that the heavy truck exerts a larger force. (Actually, an object's weight is irrelevant to the force exerted.)

Mazur tried the test on his own students. Right at the start, a warning flag went up when one student raised her hand and asked, "How should I answer these questions-according to what you taught me, or how I usually think about these things?" To Mazur's consternation, the simple test of conceptual understanding showed that his students had not grasped the basic ideas of his physics course: two-thirds of them were modern Aristotelians. "The students did well on textbook-style problems," he explains. "They had a bag of tricks, formulas to apply. But that was solving problems by rote. They floundered on the simple word problems, which demanded a real understanding of the concepts behind the formulas."

Some soul-searching followed. "That was a very discouraging moment," he says. "Was I not such a good teacher after all? Maybe I have dumb students in my class. There's something wrong with the test-it's a trick test! How hard it is to accept that the blame lies with yourself."

Serendipity provided the breakthrough he needed. Reviewing the test of conceptual understanding, Mazur twice tried to explain one of its questions to the class, but the students remained obstinately confused. "Then I did something I had never done in my teaching career," he recalls. "I said, 'Why don't you discuss it with each other?'" Immediately, the lecture hall was abuzz as 150 students started talking to each other in one-on-one conversations about the puzzling question. "It was complete chaos," says Mazur. "But within three minutes, they had figured it out. That was very surprising to me-I had just spent 10 minutes trying to explain this. But the class said, 'OK, We've got it, let's move on.'

"Here's what happened," he continues. "First, when one student has the right answer and the other doesn't, the first one is more likely to convince the second-it's hard to talk someone into the wrong answer when they have the right one. More important, a fellow student is more likely to reach them than Professor Mazur-and this is the crux of the method. You're a student and you've only recently learned this, so you still know where you got hung up, because it's not that long ago that you were hung up on that very same thing. Whereas Professor Mazur got hung up on this point when he was 17, and he no longer remembers how difficult it was back then. He has lost the ability to understand what a beginning learner faces."

This innovative style of learning grew into "peer instruction" or "interactive learning," a pedagogical method that has spread far beyond physics and taken root on campuses nationally. Last year, Mazur gave nearly 100 lectures on the subject at venues all around the world. (His 1997 book Peer Instruction is a user's manual; a 2007 DVD, Interactive Teaching, produced by Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, illustrates the method in detail.)

Interactive learning triples students' gains in knowledge as measured by the kinds of conceptual tests that had once deflated Mazur's spirits, and by many other assessments as well. It has other salutary effects, like erasing the gender gap between male and female undergraduates. "If you look at incoming scores for our male and female physics students at Harvard, there's a gap," Mazur explains. "If you teach a traditional course, the gap just translates up: men gain, women gain, but the gap remains the same. If you teach interactively, both gain more, but the women gain disproportionately more and close the gap." Though there isn't yet definitive research on what causes this, Mazur speculates that the verbal and collaborative/collegial nature of peer interactions may enhance the learning environment for women students.

There's also better retention of knowledge. "In a traditional physics course, two months after taking the final exam, people are back to where they were before taking the course," Mazur notes. "It's shocking." (Concentrators are an exception to this, as subsequent courses reinforce their knowledge base.) Peer-instructed students who've actively argued for and explained their understanding of scientific concepts hold onto their knowledge longer. Another benefit is cultivating more scientists. A comparison of intended and actual concentrators in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields indicates that those taught interactively are only half as likely to change to a non-STEM discipline as students in traditional courses.

Scores of Harvard faculty members are experimenting with innovative styles of teaching in their classes. Mazur's profile is perhaps the highest because he has been at it for two decades and has poured so much passion into the pursuit. But across the University's faculties, instructors are trying out new, more effective modes of pedagogy, partly in response to a generation of students who have been learning all their lives from computer screens, websites, and visual media (see "Professor Video," November-December 2009, page 34). Often, these efforts embody a search for alternatives to the traditional lecture. The recent $40-million gift from Rita E. Hauser, L '58, and Gustave M. Hauser, J.D. '53, will spur a wide variety of experiments in this realm (see "A Landmark Gift for Learning").

Such pedagogical invention isn't just a trial-and-error endeavor. Rigorous evaluations using statistical analysis can help distinguish the most promising innovations. For his part, Mazur has collected reams of data on his students' results. (He says most scholars, even scientists, rely on anecdotal evidence instead.) End-of-semester course evaluations he dismisses as nothing more than "popularity contests" that ought to be abolished. "There is zero correlation between course evaluations and the amount learned," he says. "Award-winning teachers with the highest evaluations can produce the same results as teachers who are getting fired." He asserts that he is "far more interested in learning than teaching, " and envisions a shift from "teaching" to "helping students learn." The focus moves away from the lectern and toward the physical and imaginative activity of each student in class.

Interactive pedagogy, for example, turns passive, note-taking students into active, de facto teachers who explain their ideas to each other and contend for their points of view. ("The person who learns the most in any classroom," Mazur declares, "is the teacher.") Thousands of research studies on learning indicate that "active learning is really at a premium. It's the most effective thing," says Terry Aladjem, executive director of the Bok Center and lecturer on social studies. "That means focusing on what students actually do in the classroom, or in some other learning environment. From cognitive science, we hear that learning is a process of moving information from short-term to long-term memory; assessment research has proven that active learning does that best."

Active learners take new information and apply it, rather than merely taking note of it. Firsthand use of new material develops personal ownership. When subject matter connects directly with students' experiences, projects, and goals, they care more about the material they seek to master. In the abstract, for example, statistics may seem a dry pursuit, but a graduate student with her own data to analyze for a doctoral dissertation suddenly finds multiple regression a compelling subject.

When Mazur speaks to audiences on pedagogy, he asks his listeners to think about something they are really good at-perhaps some skill they are proud of, especially one that advanced their career. "Now, think of how you became good at it," he says next. Audience members, supplied with wireless clickers, can choose from several alternatives: trial and error, apprenticeship, lectures, family and friends, practicing. Data from thousands of subjects make "two things stand out," Mazur says. "The first is that there is a huge spike at practicing-around 60 percent of the people select 'practicing.'" The other thing is that for many audiences, which often number in the hundreds, "there is absolutely zero percent for lectures. Nobodycites lectures."

Taking active learning seriously means revamping the entire teaching/learning enterprise-even turning it inside out or upside down. For example, active learning overthrows the "transfer of information" model of instruction, which casts the student as a dry sponge who passively absorbs facts and ideas from a teacher. This model has ruled higher education for 600 years, since the days of the medieval Schoolmen who, in their lectio mode, stood before a room reading a book aloud to the assembly-no questions permitted. The modern version is the lecture.

Though it remains the dominant form of instruction in higher education and can sometimes become a real art form, the lecture may be on its last legs. "The hands-on interactive experience in a lab or an art studio is more powerful than a lecture, and can't be replicated online," says Logan McCarty, director of physical sciences education. "The stereotypical lecture where the professor is giving exposition of textbook-type material to the students-I think that type of exposition can be done better with online video or by an interactive-tutorial format." Today at Harvard, many courses distribute lecture notes, and others post video recordings of lectures online. After hearing about Mazur's approach to teaching, Weatherhead University Professor Gary King, a government scholar, started to make recorded lectures available before class, thus freeing class time for more active styles of instruction.

The active-learning approach challenges lecturers to re-evaluate what they can accomplish during class that offers the greatest value for students. Mazur cites a quip to the effect that lectures are a way of transferring the instructor's lecture notes to students' notebooks without passing through the brains of either. (He also likes a quote from Albert Camus: "Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.") "The danger with lucid lectures-of which we have so many on this campus, with so many brilliant people-is that they create the illusion of teaching for teachers, and the illusion of learning for learners," he says. "Sitting passively and taking notes is just not a way of learning. Yet lectures are 99 percent of how we teach!"

Technology is also pushing lecturers to either get better or explore alternatives. "These days I'm competing, frankly, with myself on video," said senior lecturer on computer science David Malan at a Faculty of Arts and Sciences program on " Redefining Teaching and Learning in the Twenty-First Century " last February. Online videos of his Computer Science 50 lectures, he said, "are accessible any number of hours of the day, and you can play me at twice the speed and therefore get these lectures twice as efficiently. I genuinely view this as a challenge to myself: what should be the role of lectures in CS 50? It's definitely an opportunity to present conceptual material, but I also think it's to incentivize students to get there and stay there throughout the semester: it needs to be a compelling experience."

At the same time, "More and more faculty are finding that the traditional lecture no longer suits them," Aladjem notes. "And they are finding alternative ways to connect with students. Some are quite sophisticated in using course websites, blogs, and other means to be in touch. Michael McCormick, Goelet professor of medieval history [see " Who Killed the Men of England? "], holds office hours late at night via Skype, and it's very popular. Nearly all undergraduates have laptops, smart phones, or other computing devices and use them all constantly. In this environment, we have to keep in mind that there's some sort of quantum-a fixed amount-of human attention. In a digital age, we are dividing it up into ever-smaller slices, and there's more and more a race to get pieces of that attention, especially in the classroom. That is one of the biggest challenges facing our faculty.

"I think the answer to this challenge is to rethink the nature of the college course, to consider it as a different kind of animal these days," he continues. "A course can be a communication across time about a discrete topic, with a different temporal existence than the old doing-the-homework-for-the-lecture routine. Students now tap into a course through different media; they may download materials via its website, and even access a faculty member's research and bio. It's a different kind of communication between faculty and students. Websites and laptops have been around for years now, but we haven't fully thought through how to integrate them with teaching so as to conceive of courses differently."

Mazur's reinvention of the course drops the lecture model and deeply engages students in the learning/teaching endeavor. It starts from his view of education as a two-step process: information transfer, and then making sense of and assimilating that information. "In the standard approach, the emphasis in class is on the first, and the second is left to the student on his or her own, outside of the classroom," he says. "If you think about this rationally, you have to flip that, and put the first one outside the classroom, and the second inside. So I began to ask my students to read my lecture notes before class, and then tell me what questions they have [ordinarily, using the course's website], and when we meet, we discuss those questions."

Thus Mazur begins a class with a student-sourced question, then asks students to think the problem through and commit to an answer, which each records using a handheld device (smartphones work fine), and which a central computer statistically compiles, without displaying the overall tally. If between 30 and 70 percent of the class gets the correct answer (Mazur seeks controversy), he moves on to peer instruction. Students find a neighbor with a different answer and make a case for their own response. Each tries to convince the other. During the ensuing chaos, Mazur circulates through the room, eavesdropping on the conversations. He listens especially to incorrect reasoning, so "I can re-sensitize myself to the difficulties beginning learners face." After two or three minutes, the students vote again, and typically the percentage of correct answers dramatically improves. Then the cycle repeats.

"We want to educate leaders, the innovators of society," Mazur says. "Let's turn our students into real problem solvers. In a real-world problem, you know where you want to get, but you don't know how to get there. For example: how can I bake a cake with no flour? The goal is known, but the prescription to get there isn't. Most tests and exams at Harvard are not like that; they are questions where you need to determine what the answer is. In physics it might be, What was the velocity of the car before it hit the tree? There, you know exactly what you need to do: you have a prescription to calculate velocity, but you don't know the velocity. It's the opposite of a real-life problem, because you know the prescription, but you don't know the answer.

"Even now, if I give my students a problem on an exam that they have not seen before, there will be complaints: 'We've never done a problem of this kind.' I tell them, 'If you had done a problem of this kind, then by definition, this would not be a problem.' We have to train people to tackle situations they have not encountered before. Most instructors avoid this like the plague, because the students dislike it. Even at Harvard, we tend to keep students in their comfort zone. The first step in developing those skills is stepping into unknown territory.

"It's not easy. You get a lot of student resistance," he continues. "You should see some of the vitriolic e-mails I get. The generic complaint is that they have to do all the learning themselves. Rather than lecturing, I'm making them prepare themselves for class-and in class, rather than telling them things, I'm asking them questions. They'd much rather sit there and listen and take notes. Some will say, 'I didn't pay $47,000 to learn it all from the textbook. I think you should go over the material from the book, point by point, in class.' Not realizing that they learn precious little by that, and they should actually be offended if I did that, because it's an insult to their intelligence-then, I'm essentially reading the book to them."

In addition to student resistance, there is architectural resistance. "Most classrooms-more like 99.9 percent-on campus are auditoriums," Mazur says. "They are built with just one purpose: focusing the attention of many on the professor. The professor is active, and the audience is just sitting there, taking in information. Instead, you could get away from the auditorium seating and set up classrooms like you see in elementary schools, where four children sit around a square table facing each other, and you give them some kind of group activity to work on: that's active learning. It's no accident that most elementary schools are organized that way. The reason is, that's how we learn. For some reason we unlearn how to learn as we progress from elementary school through middle school and high school. And in a sense, maybe I'm bringing kindergarten back to college by having people talk to each other!"

"Think of education as a whole-what is it?" Mazur asks. "Is it just the transfer of information? If that's the case, then Harvard has a problem, and all other universities have a problem, too. Information comes from everywhere now: the university is no longer the gatekeeper of information, as it has been since the Renaissance. And if it were, the only thing we would need to do is videotape the best lectures and put them online, like the Khan Academy [the California-based, nonprofit, online educational organization founded by Salman Khan, M.B.A. '03]. They have 65 million users: it's a force to be reckoned with. But ultimately, learning is a social experience. Harvard is Harvard not because of the buildings, not because of the professors, but because of the students interacting with one another."

Universities are at the core of an information culture: it is hard to imagine any institution that deals more purely in information than higher education. Yet academies are also famously slow to change-both a strength and a vulnerability in a rapidly evolving world. If knowledge now streams in from everywhere, if universities are no longer the "gatekeepers of information," what essential mission can transcend such technological and cultural change?

"The live classroom is still the best medium for a student to truly be known as an intellectual being and to engage with other such beings," Aladjem says. "You learn from your peers in all walks of life. Students have always hidden in their rooms; social media can keep them in their rooms longer." Perhaps the key is to coax students not only out of their rooms, but into each other's minds. If learning is indeed a social experience, then a "party school"-of a certain kind-just might offer the richest learning environment of all.

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In 1990, after seven years of teaching at Harvard, Eric Mazur, now Balkanski professor of physics and applied physics, was delivering clear, polished lectures and demonstrations and getting high student evaluations for his introductory Physics 11 course, populated mainly by premed and engineering students who were successfully solving complicated problems. Then he discovered that his success as a teacher "was a complete illusion, a house of cards."

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"Why you can past the test and still fail in the real world"

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"Why you can past the test and still fail in the real world"

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Eric Mazur, Harvard professor on solving authentic problems as the key to meaningful learning

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"Why You Can Pass Tests and Still Fail in the Real World" by Eric Mazur, Harvard University

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Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University and Area Dean of Applied Physics. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University.

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Cornell University: Center for Teaching Innovation

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Cornell University: Center for Teaching Innovation

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What is active learning

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Learn how to encourage student engagement by incorporating discussion, active learning techniques, collaborative work, problem-based learning and more.

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Vanderbilt University: Center for Teaching

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Vanderbilt University: Center for Teaching

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What is active learning and some strategies you can try tomorrow

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Cite this guide: Brame, C., (2016). Active learning. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/active-learning/.

What is it?

In their seminal work Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom, compiled in 1991 for the Association for the Study of Higher Education and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, Bonwell and Eison defined strategies that promote active learning as "instructional activities involving students in doing things and thinking about what they are doing" (Bonwell and Eison, 1991). Approaches that promote active learning focus more on developing students' skills than on transmitting information and require that students do something-read, discuss, write-that requires higher-order thinking. They also tend to place some emphasis on students' explorations of their own attitudes and values.

This definition is broad, and Bonwell and Eison explicitly recognize that a range of activities can fall within it. They suggest a spectrum of activities to promote active learning, ranging from very simple (e.g., pausing lecture to allow students to clarify and organize their ideas by discussing with neighbors) to more complex (e.g., using case studies as a focal point for decision-making). In their book Scientific Teaching, Handelsman, Miller and Pfund also note that the line between active learning and formative assessment is blurry and hard to define; after all, teaching that promotes students' active learning asks students to do or produce something, which then can serve to help assess understanding (2007).

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and the Australasian Survey of Student Engagement (AUSSE) provides a very simple definition: active learning involves "students' efforts to actively construct their knowledge." This definition is supplemented by the items that the AUSSE uses to measure active learning: working with other students on projects during class; making a presentation; asking questions or contributing to discussions; participating in a community-based project as part of a course; working with other students outside of class on assignments; discussing ideas from a course with others outside of class; tutoring peers (reported in Carr et al., 2015).

Freeman and colleagues collected written definitions of active learning from >300 people attending seminars on active learning, arriving at a consensus definition that emphasizes students' use of higher order thinking to complete activities or participate in discussion in class (Freeman et al., 2014). Their definition also notes the frequent link between active learning and working in groups.

Thus active learning is commonly defined as activities that students do to construct knowledge and understanding. The activities vary but require students to do higher order thinking. Although not always explicitly noted, metacognition-students' thinking about their own learning-is an important element, providing the link between activity and learning.

What's the theoretical basis?

Constructivist learning theory emphasizes that individuals learn through building their own knowledge, connecting new ideas and experiences to existing knowledge and experiences to form new or enhanced understanding (Bransford et al., 1999). The theory, developed by Piaget and others, posits that learners can either assimilate new information into an existing framework, or can modify that framework to accommodate new information that contradicts prior understanding. Approaches that promote active learning often explicitly ask students to make connections between new information and their current mental models, extending their understanding. In other cases, teachers may design learning activities that allow students to confront misconceptions, helping students reconstruct their mental models based on more accurate understanding. In either case, approaches that promote active learning promote the kind of cognitive work identified as necessary for learning by constructivist learning theory.

Active learning approaches also often embrace the use of cooperative learning groups, a constructivist-based practice that places particular emphasis on the contribution that social interaction can make. Lev Vygotsky's work elucidated the relationship between cognitive processes and social activities and led to the sociocultural theory of development, which suggests that learning takes place when students solve problems beyond their current developmental level with the support of their instructor or their peers (Vygotsky 1978). Thus active learning approaches that rely on group work rest on this sociocultural branch of constructivist learning theory, leveraging peer-peer interaction to promote students' development of extended and accurate mental models.

Is there evidence that it works?

The evidence that active learning approaches help students learn more effectively than transmissionist approaches in which instructors rely on "teaching by telling" is robust and stretches back more than thirty years (see, for example, Bonwell and Eison, 1991). Here, we will focus on two reports that review and analyze multiple active learning studies.

Freeman and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 225 studies comparing "constructivist versus exposition-centered course designs" in STEM disciplines (Freeman et al., 2014). They included studies that examined the design of class sessions (as opposed to out-of-class work or laboratories) with at least some active learning versus traditional lecturing, comparing failure rates and student scores on examinations, concept inventories, or other assessments. They found that students in traditional lectures were 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in courses with active learning (odds ratio of 1.95, Z = 10.4, P<<0.001). Further, they found that on average, student performance on exams, concept inventories, or other assessments increased by about half a standard deviation when some active learning was included in course design (weighted standardized mean difference of 0.47, Z = 9.781, P<<0.001). These results were consistent across disciplines: they observed no significant difference in the effects of active learning in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geology, math, physics, and psychology courses. They performed two analyses examining the possibility that the results were due to a publication bias (i.e., a bias toward publishing studies with larger effects), finding that there would have to be a large number of unpublished studies that observed no difference between active learning and lecturing to negate their findings: 114 reporting no difference on exam or concept inventory performance and 438 reporting no difference in failure rate. The authors conclude that the evidence for the benefits of active learning are very strong, stating that, "If the experiments analyzed here had been conducted as randomized controlled trials of medical interventions, they may have been stopped for benefit-meaning that enrolling patients in the control condition might be discontinued because the treatment being tested was clearly more beneficial."

These results support other, earlier reviews (e.g., Hake, 1998; Prince, 2004; Springer et al., 1999). In one such review, Ruiz-Primo and colleagues examined published studies examining the effects of active learning approaches in undergraduate biology, chemistry, engineering and physics courses (Ruiz-Primo et al., 2011). They identified 166 studies that reported an effect size when comparing the effects of an innovation (i.e., active learning approaches) to traditional instruction that did not include the innovation. Overall, they found that inclusion of the active learning approaches improved student outcomes (mean effect size = 0.47), although there are important caveats to consider. First, the authors coded the active learning activities as conceptually oriented tasks, collaborative learning activities, technology-enabled activities, inquiry-based projects, or some combination of those four categories, and important differences existed within the categories (for example, technology-assisted inquiry-based projects on average did not produce positive effects). Second, more than 80% of the studies included were quasi-experimental rather than experimental, and the positive benefits (average effect size = 0.26) were lower for the experimental studies in which students were randomly assigned to a treatment group. Finally, many of the studies did not control for pre-existing knowledge and abilities in the treatment groups. Nonetheless, the review does provide qualified support for the inclusion of active learning approaches in instruction.

While the two reviews reported focus on STEM disciplines and no similar reviews exist for the humanities and social sciences, the bulk of the evidence suggests that active learning approaches are effective across disciplines (Ambrose et al, 2010; Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Chickering and Gamson, 1987).

Why is it important?

In addition to the evidence that active learning approaches promote learning for all students, there is some evidence that active learning approaches are an effective tool in making classrooms more inclusive. Haak and colleagues examined the effects of active learning for students in the University of Washington's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) who were enrolled in an introductory biology course (Haak et al., 2011). Students in the EOP are educationally or economically disadvantaged, are typically the first in their families to attend college, and include most underrepresented minority students at the University of Washington. Previous work had demonstrated that the researchers could predict student grades in the introductory biology course based on their college GPA and SAT verbal score; students in the EOP had a mean failure rate of ~22% compared to a mean failure rate of ~10% for students not in the EOP. When multiple highly structured approaches to promote active learning were incorporated into the introductory biology course, all students in the course benefited, but students in the EOP demonstrated a disproportionate benefit, reducing the achievement gap to almost half of the starting level. Given the pressing need to make U.S. college classrooms more inviting and productive spaces for students from all backgrounds, these results provide another compelling reason to incorporate active learning approaches into course design.

Lorenzo, Crouch, and Mazur also investigated the impact of active learning approaches on the difference in male and female performance in introductory physics classes (2006). They found that inclusion of active engagement techniques benefited all students, but had the greatest impact on female students' performance. In fact, when they included a "high dose" of active learning approaches, the gender gap was eliminated. This result supports earlier work suggesting that women particularly benefit from active learning approaches (Laws et al., 1999; Schneider, 2001).

What are techniques to use?

Brief, easy supplements for lectures

The Pause Procedure - Pause for two minutes every 12 to 18 minutes, encouraging students to discuss and rework notes in pairs. This approach encourages students to consider their understanding of the lecture material, including its organization. It also provides an opportunity for questioning and clarification and has been shown to significantly increase learning when compared to lectures without the pauses. (Bonwell and Eison, 1991; Rowe, 1980; 1986; Ruhl, Hughes, & Schloss, 1980)

Retrieval practice-Pause for two or three minutes every 15 minutes, having students write everything they can remember from preceding class segment. Encourage questions. This approach prompts students to retrieve information from memory, which improves long term memory, ability to learn subsequent material, and ability to translate information to new domains. (Brame and Biel, 2015; see also the CFT's guide to test-enhanced learning)

Demonstrations -Ask students to predict the result of a demonstration, briefly discussing with a neighbor. After demonstration, ask them to discuss the observed result and how it may have differed from their prediction; follow up with instructor explanation. This approach asks students to test their understanding of a system by predicting an outcome. If their prediction is incorrect, it helps them see the misconception and thus prompts them to restructure their mental model.

Think-pair-share-Ask students a question that requires higher order thinking (e.g., application, analysis, or evaluation levels within Bloom's taxonomy). Ask students to think or write about an answer for one minute, then turn to a peer to discuss their responses for two minutes. Ask groups to share responses and follow up with instructor explanation. By asking students to explain their answer to a neighbor and to critically consider their neighbor's responses, this approach helps students articulate newly formed mental connections.

Peer instruction with ConcepTests-This modification of the think-pair-share involves personal response devices (e.g., clickers). Pose a conceptually based multiple-choice question. Ask students tothink about their answer and vote on a response before turning to a neighbor to discuss. Encourage students to change their answers after discussion, if appropriate, and share class results by revealing a graph of student responses. Use the graph as a stimulus for class discussion. This approach is particularly well-adapted for large classes and can be facilitated with a variety of tools (e.g., Poll Everywhere, TopHat, TurningPoint). More information is available in the CIRTL MOOC An Introduction t o Evidence-Based College STEM Teaching. (Fagen et al., 2002; Crouch and Mazur, 2001)

Minute papers -Ask students a question that requires them to reflect on their learning or to engage in critical thinking. Have them write for one minute. Ask students to share responses to stimulate discussion or collect all responses to inform future class sessions. Like the think-pair-share approach, this approach encourages students to articulate and examine newly formed connections. (Angelo and Cross, 1993; Handelsman et al., 2007)

Activities to replace some lecture

Strip sequence-Give students the steps in a process on strips of paper that are jumbled; ask them to work together to reconstruct the proper sequence. This approach can strengthen students' logical thinking processes and test their mental model of a process. (Handelsman et al., 2007) An example from Aarhus University is provided below.

Concept map-Concept maps are visual representations of the relationships between concepts. Concepts are placed in nodes (often, circles), and the relationships between indicated by labeled arrows connecting the concepts. To have students create a concept map, identify the key concepts to be mapped in small groups or as a whole class. Ask students to determine the general relationship between the concepts and to arrange them two at a time, drawing arrows between related concepts and labeling with a short phrase to describe the relationship. By asking students to build an external representation of their mental model of a process, this approach helps students examine and strengthen the organization within the model. Further, it can emphasize the possibility of multiple "right" answers. More information and a tool to do online concept mapping can be found at the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition. (Novak and Canas, 2008) An example is shown below.

Mini-maps. Mini-maps are like concept maps, but students are given a relatively short list of terms (usually 10 or fewer) to incorporate into their map. To use this approach, provide students a list of major concepts or specific terms and ask them to work in groups of two or three to arrange the terms in a logical structure, showing relationships with arrows and words. Ask groups to volunteer to share their mini-maps and clarify any confusing points. Mini-maps have many of the same strengths as concept maps but can be completed more quickly and thus can serve as part of a larger class session with other learning activities. (Handelsman et al., 2007)

Categorizing grids. Present students with a grid made up of several important categories and a list of scrambled terms, images, equations, or other items. Ask students to quickly sort the terms into the correct categories in the grid. Ask volunteers to share their grids and answer questions that arise. This approach allows students to express and thus interrogate the distinctions they see within a field of related items. It can be particularly effective at helping instructors identify misconceptions. (Angelo and Cross, 1993)

Student-generated test questions. Provide students with a copy of your learning goals for a particular unit and a figure summarizing Bloom's taxonomy (with representative verbs associated with each category). Challenge groups of students to create test questions corresponding to your learning goals and different levels of the taxonomy. Consider having each group share their favorite test question with the whole class or consider distributing all student-generated questions to the class as a study guide. This approach helps students consider what they know as well as implications of the instructor's stated learning goals. (Angelo and Cross, 1993)

Decision-making activities. Ask students to imagine that they are policy-makers who must make and justify tough decisions. Provide a short description of a thorny problem, ask them to work in groups to arrive at a decision, and then have groups share out their decisions and explain their reasoning. This highly engaging technique helps students critically consider a challenging problem and encourages them to be creative in considering solutions. The "real-world" nature of the problems can provide incentive for students to dig deeply into the problems. (Handelsman et al., 2007)

Content, form, and function outlines. Students in small groups are asked to carefully analyze a particular artifact-such as a poem, a story, an essay, a billboard, an image, or a graph-and identify the "what" (the content), the "how" (the form), and the function (the why). This technique can help students consider the various ways that meaning is communicated in different genres. (Angelo and Cross, 1993)

Case-based learning. Much like decision-making activities, case-based learning presents students with situations from the larger world that require students to apply their knowledge to reach a conclusion about an open-ended situation. Provide students with a case, asking them to decide what they know that is relevant to the case, what other information they may need, and what impact their decisions may have, considering the broader implications of their decisions. Give small groups (3-5) of students time to consider responses, circulating to ask questions and provide help as needed. Provide opportunities for groups to share responses; the greatest value from case-based learning comes from the complexity and variety of answers that may be generated. More information and collections of cases are available at the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, the Case Method Website of UC-Santa Barbara, and World History Sources.

Discussion techniques

Many faculty members dispense with lecture altogether, turning to discussion to prompt the kinds of thinking needed to build understanding. Elizabeth Barkley provides a large collection of discussion techniques focused on different learning goals, ranging from lower level to higher level thinking (Barkley, 2010). The CFT's Joe Bandy has summarized some of the most useful of these techniques.

Other approaches

There are other active learning pedagogies, many of which are highly structured and have dedicated websites and strong communities. These include team-based learning (TBL), process-oriented guided inquiry learning (POGIL), peer-led team learning, and problem-based learning (PBL). Further, the flipped classroom model is based on the idea that class time will be spent with students engaged in active learning.

How should you get started?

Start small, start early, and start with activities that pose low risk for both instructors and students. The Pause Procedure, retrieval practice, minute papers, and the think-pair-share technique provide easy entry points to incorporating active learning approaches, requiring the instructor to change very little while providing students an opportunity to organize and clarify their thinking. As you begin to incorporate these practices, it's a good idea to explain to your students why you're doing so; talking to your students about their learning not only helps build a supportive classroom environment, but can also help them develop their metacognitive skills (and thus their ability to become independent learners).

As you consider other active learning techniques to use, use the " backwards design" approach: begin by identifying your learning goals, think about how you would identify whether students had reached them (that is, how you might structure assessment), and then choose an active learning approach that helps your students achieve those goals. Students typically have positive responses to active learning activities that are meaningful, appropriately challenging, and clearly tied to learning goals and assessments (see, for example, Lumpkin et al., 2015). Finally, consult colleagues within your department and the Center for Teaching for help and feedback as you design and implement active learning approaches.

Other sources of information

There are many great sites that provide examples of active learning activities. Here is a sampling:

References

Ambrose, S.A., Bridges, M.W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M.C., Norman, M.K., and Mayer, R.E. (2010). How learning works: seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Angelo, T.A. and Cross, K.P. (1993). Classroom assessment techniques: a handbook for college teachers. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Barkley, E. (2010). Student engagement techniques: a handbook for college faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bonwell, C. C., and Eison, J.A. (1991). Active learning: creating excitement in the classroom. ASH#-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1, Washington, D.C.: The George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development.

Brame, C.J. and Biel, R. (2015). Test-enhanced learning: the potential for testing to promote greater learning in undergraduate science courses. CBE Life Sciences Education, 14, 1-12.

Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., and Cocking, R.R. (Eds.) (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Carr, R., Palmer, S., and Hagel, P. (2015). Active learning: the importance of developing a comprehensive measure. Active Learning in Higher Education 16, 173-186.

Chickering, A.W. and Gamson, Z.F. (1987). Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education. AAHE Bulletin March 1987, 3-7

Crouch, C.H. and Mazur, E. (2001). Peer instruction: ten years of experience and results. Am. Journal of Physics 69, 970-977.

Fagen, A.P., Crouch, C.H., and Mazur, E. (2002). Peer instruction: results from a range of classrooms. Physics Teacher 40, 206-209.

Freeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith, M.K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wenderoth, M.P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 111, 8410-8415.

Haak, D.C., HilleRisLambers, J., Pitre, E., and Freeman, S. (2011). Increased structure and active learning reduce the achievement gap in introductory biology. Science 332, 1213-1216.

Hake, R. (1998). Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses. American Journal of Physics 66, 64-74.

Handelsman, J., Miller, S., and Pfund, C. (2007). Scientific teaching. New York: W.H. Freeman.

Hyman, R.T. (1980). Improving discussion leadership. New York: Columbia University Teachers College Press.

Laws, P., Rosborough P, and Poodry, F. (1999).Women's responses to an activity-based introductory physics program. American Journal of Physics 67, S32-S37.

Lorenzo, M., Crouch, C.H., Mazur, E. (2006). Reducing the gender gap in the physics classroom. American Journal of Physics 74, 118-122.

Lumpkin, A., Achen, R., and Dodd,R. (2015). Student perceptions of active learning. College Student Journal 49, 121-133.

Novak, J.D. and Canas, A.J. (2008). The theory underlying concept maps and how to construct and use them. Technical Report IHMC CmapTools 2006-01 Rev 2008-01 (retrieved from http://cmap.ihmc.us/docs/theory-of-concept-maps).

Prince, M. (2004). Does active learning work? A review of the research. Journal of Engineering Education 93, 223-231.

Rowe, M.B. (1980). Pausing principles and their effects on reasoning in science. In Teaching the Sciences, edited by F. B. Brawer. New Directions for Community Colleges No. 31. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Ruhl, K., Hughes, C.A., and Schloss, P.J. (1987). Using the Pause Procedure to enhance lecture rcall. Teacher Education and Special Education 10, 14-18.

Ruiz-Primo, M.A., Briggs, D., Iverson, H., Talbot, R., Shepard, L.A. (2011). Impact of undergraduate science course innovations on learning. Science 331, 1269-1270.

Schneider, M. (2001). Encouragement of women physics majors at Grinnell College: A case study. Phys. Teach. 39, 280-282.

Springer, L., Stanne, M.E., Donovan, S.S. (1999). Effects of small-group learning on undergraduates in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology. Rev. Educ. Res. 69, 21-51.

Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

This teaching guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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Active Learning. By Cynthia J. Brame, CFT Assistant Director Print Version Cite this guide: Brame, C., (2016). Active learning. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved [todaysdate] from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/active-learning/. What is it? What's the theoretical basis? Is there evidence that it works? Why is it important? What are techniques to use?

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Online database full of ideas you can modify for your students to promote active learning in your classroom

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Welcome to ABLConnect, a searchable database of interactive lesson plans and assignments designed for and used in college and university classrooms. We hope this website will provide you with examples that will help you think about how to design your own activities and assignments. You can search activities by subject, activity type, and learning goal.

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Stanford Professor and Nobel Laureate Carl Wiemen's, "Observation Guide for Active Learning Classroom"

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Ken Robinson, TED talk

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Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

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In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.

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Inclusiveness matters in active learning

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Inclusiveness matters in active learning

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Inclusive literacy info-graphic

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Fostering diverse perspectives

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Do you sometimes feel torn between teaching literature and literacy? On the one hand, I love literature. It is one of the reasons I became an English teacher. I want to inspire others to love , The Canterbury Tales, and Animal Farm as much as I do. On the other hand, I am also passionate about literacy. I want to inspire a generation of lifelong readers and recognize that not every student is going to be excited by a Scottish thane's obsession for power, a knight's pilgrimage to Canterbury, or a bunch of talking pigs. Many of us struggle with the readability and relatability of the classical literary works school districts and national standards often expect us to teach. We know each reader's interests, strengths, and challenges are unique, and no single text is appropriate for every student.

So should we teach canonical works or not? There are those of us who keep trying, and there are those of us who jump at the chance to teach other texts, including young adult novels, nonfiction works, graphic novels, short stories, picture books, poetry, music, movies, and art. And there are those of us who bounce back and forth, teaching a classic novel, followed by a young adult novel, an essay squeezed in between, feeling a bit schizophrenic in our efforts to satisfy the expectations of districts, standards, parents, students, and self.

No matter your position, if we want students to read more often and subsequently improve their reading proficiency, then we need to provide high-interest and more accessible texts. We need to better incorporate what students are more likely to read out of school into the school curriculum. We need to surround students with all kinds of relatable genres.

It has taken me over 25 years of teaching, a whole lot of reading and listening, not to mention a bunch of teacher trial-and-error, to figure out a way to interweave literature with literacy. I write about this process in Workshopping the Canon. In this book, "workshop" is used as a verb (i.e., to workshop) because it involves action on the part of teachers. When we workshop the canon, we actively and purposefully partner classical texts with a variety of high-interest texts from multiple genres within a reading and writing workshop structure, aligning the teaching of literature with what we have come to recognize as best practices in the teaching of literacy.

When we workshop the canon, we immerse students in a wide assortment of texts, providing multiple viewpoints and an array of representations gathered around a unit focus. Workshopping teachers bring together classic texts and contemporary texts; fiction texts and nonfiction texts; and especially a wide array of texts representing a range of world literatures, historical traditions, and genres and texts representing the experiences of different genders, ethnicities, and social classes.

When we "workshop the canon," we can still teach , but we do so within a unit focused around an idea such as freedom of speech and expression. We then explore the unit focus through a variety of reading workshop structures, including read-aloud, independent reading, shared reading, close reading, readers theatre, response engagements, Socratic circles, book clubs, and mini-lessons; and writing workshop structures, including mentor texts, writing plans, mini-lessons , independent writing, conferences, writing circles, and publishing opportunities. I explain each of these structures in the book. If we workshop the canon, we can be both a teacher of literacy and a teacher of literature. One does not have to preclude the other.

When we workshop the canon, we can better reach diverse learners and foster diverse perspectives. When we teach one text at a time, we limit points of view. So much of English language arts education is departmentalized and compartmentalized: literature is detached from literacy, reading is separate from writing, and grammar is disconnected from both. We break apart genres like crackers and study poetry, memoir, short stories, then plays. Classical literary works are split from young adult novels. We have also been known to celebrate, albeit isolate, works by women, African American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian authors. Time periods and literary movements further sever texts into smaller groups. But when we workshop the canon, we increase cultural perspectives through students' multiple and varied engagements with texts and each other.

When we workshop the canon, we can better meet the diverse needs of students because workshop structures and strategies are accessible to all learners. We can better differentiate learning and meet individual needs in a reading and writing workshop environment. It only makes sense. If there are more texts, there are more choices. Students can make guided selections for independent reading across levels and languages, whereas the reading of a core canonical text is supported and shared.

My hope in writing Workshopping the Canon is to provide middle and high school English teachers with ideas for workshopping their own classrooms and curriculum. The teachers who write alongside me detail their classroom experiences to encourage colleagues. While this book does provide specific suggestions for workshopping certain canonical texts, the ideas are shared to prompt independent, creative, and critical thinking. The suggestions offered are not meant to be prescriptive; they are descriptive. This book endeavors to make the often invisible and always messy processes of workshop planning visible. It is written to show teachers a way to teach reading, writing, language, speaking, and listening using familiar classical texts. It is a book to help bridge the divide between literature and literacy. It is a book for those teachers wanting to workshop. It is a book to help you through the process.
Mary Styslinger is an Associate Professor of English and Literacy Education at the University of South Carolina. She is a past president of the South Carolina Council of Teachers of English and co-edits the South Carolina English Teacher. Her new book, Workshopping the Canon, has just been published by NCTE.
Note: Members will receive a 20% discount and free shipping for Workshopping the Canon until December 31 by using the code THANKFUL2017.

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Do you sometimes feel torn between teaching literature and literacy? On the one hand, I love literature. It is one of the reasons I became an English teacher. I want to inspire others to love , The Canterbury Tales , and Animal Farm as much as I do.

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Teachers Respond

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What's the future of education? How will students learn differently? What will the schools of the future look like? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators to share their ideas. Their answers are provocative, contradictory - and make for great conversation starters. Welcome to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" future of learning.

There will be more creativity in education.
"Because that's what careers will require. Education will be not just taking in information and sharing it back, but also figuring out what to do with that information in the real world." -Josefino Rivera, Jr., educator in Buenos Aires, Argentina

The classroom will be one big makerspace.
"Technology like Evernote, Google, and Siri will be standard and will change what teachers value and test for. Basically, if you can ask Siri to answer a question, then you will not be evaluated on that. Instead, learning will be project based. Students will be evaluated on critical-thinking and problem-solving skills. Literature and math will still be taught, but they will be taught differently. Math will be taught as a way of learning how to solve problems and puzzles. In literature, students will be asked what a story means to them. Instead of taking tests, students will show learning through creative projects. The role of teachers will be to guide students in the areas where they need guidance as innovators. How do you get kids to be innovative? You let them. You get out of their way." -Nicholas Provenzano, educator in Michigan, United States

"How do you get kids to be innovative? You let them. You get out of their way."

There will be no physical campus.
"Instead, students will learn in traveling classrooms, and the real world will be their campus. Students will live together and use city libraries and city laboratories to complete a project. Learning won't be limited to a physical school. There's already a model for this: Minerva Schools, a venture university." -Hyuk Jang, educator in Busan, South Korea

Students will learn that nothing is impossible.
"Education will instill the idea that anything that is not possible now will be possible in the future. Let's make that part of education." -Kristine Sargsyan, educator in Yerevan, Armenia

Education will look nothing like it does now.
"Schools will be multidisciplinary, with a focus on social justice. You have to change the world to change the classroom, and right now, the difference between the poor and rich districts is huge." -Eduardo Godoy, educator in Sao Paulo, Brazil

Will schools even exist in 2050?
"Is teaching a dying profession? If not, then the classroom will change a lot. I don't think schools will exist in the same format, with desks and chairs. Instead, learning will incorporate virtual reality and multiple perspectives. Students will learn how to negotiate issues and exchange ideas." -Sharon Hadar, educator in Raanana, Israel

So long as there is a workplace... there will be schools.
"The K-12 experience for students also provides societal infrastructure that allows for a working class. By 2050, the 'World of Work' will have little resemblance to what it is today. We should hope this to be the case for schools as well. If we begin by helping children to identify their strengths, interests and values - and then dedicate time in school to cultivating them towards exploring where each child's unique place in the world might be - I think we'll be on the right path regardless of what new technologies or advances in learning become available.  - David Miyashiro, Superintendent, Cajon Valley Union School District, California, United States

School design will be very security oriented.
"Because of school shootings, there will be safe rooms. Climate change will lead to more extreme weather-related school closings, and as a result, schools will become a hub, a place where students go occasionally when they need it." -Shannon Brake, educator in Kansas, United States

Alternately, school design won't change much.
"The classroom hasn't changed much in the past 50 years. Even the bell design is the same as it was 50 years ago." -Vicki Albritton, educator in Georgia, United States
For more conversation starters about the future of education, sign up here for the weekly TED-Ed Newsletter.

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What's the future of education? Teachers respond

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What's the future of education? How will students learn differently? What will the schools of the future look like? We asked TED-Ed Innovative Educators to share their ideas. Their answers ar...