Key considerations when using Active Learning

There are many key elements to consider when preparing to implement a new teaching strategy within your teaching space and classroom.  This page helps to enlighten educators on some basic elements of active learning, considerations and tips for teachers of active learning, categories of active learning strategies that can be used within the classroom, simple questions to guide your active learning program.

Categories of Active Learning

There are four broad categories of learning strategies that educators may use in their active learning classroom:

• Individual activities
• Paired activities
• Informal small groups
• Cooperative student projects

When choosing which active learning strategy to implement will depend on your classroom size, physical space, learning objectives, time restraints, and your level of confidence to implement such a strategy.  These active learning strategies mentioned through this blog presentation, can be adapted and modified to individual, pairs or group work.

Balance

It is crucial that within your active learning classroom, that there is always a balance between teacher centre and student centred learning.  When there is an imbalance between these two, there is little chance for effective active learning to occur within your learning space.

Considerations of teaching in an Active Learning Classroom

The small presentation below, helps to enlighten educators about preparing yourself for teaching in an ALC, challengers that you may face such as room issues, noise and distractions and level of student engagement, tips to encourage productive group work in the ALC, and approaches to group work further detailing the cooperative learning approach alongside the team-based learning approach to active learning.

• Presentation about considerations for Teaching in Active Learning Classrooms