True active learning means…

every individual student is actively engaged on every piece of material to be learned.

There’s a lot of confusion about what counts as active learning.

True active learning means every individual student is engaged in activity, not just the class as a whole.

For instance, although a class-wide discussion might seem like active learning on the surface, it does not immediately follow that each student is active.

Often, it is only a proportionally small number of enthusiastic, vocal students who participate in all parts of the discussion and can be considered truly active.

Even if the instructor cold-calls on students who have not been participating, most students will only pay attention enough that they won’t look foolish or be embarrassed if called upon.

Moreover, true active learning requires every individual student to be actively engaged on every piece of material to be learned.

Divide-and-conquer group projects do not count as fully active learning.

Why? Because each student is only actively learning the material that corresponds to their individual responsibility in the division of labor.

The rest of the project, they observe only passively, if at all.

So, what DOES count as active learning?

To see examples of truly active learning, look to athletic training, where coaches are held accountable for quickly producing real, demonstrable performance improvements.

For instance, think about what happens during a tennis lesson.

The coach is going to have every single one of their students actively performing moves within the first few minutes of the session.

Sure, the coach might take a minute to demonstrate and break down a new move as the student watches, but for the next 10 minutes after that, the students are going to be actively practicing that new move.

The coach will observe the students and point out areas where they need to correct their form to be more effective –

and as the students get better at the new move, every single one of them will experience a real, demonstrable improvement in their athletic performance.

Maybe they’ll be able to hit the ball faster or more precisely.

Maybe they’ll be able to return a tricky volley that originally kept going past them at the beginning of the session.

Whatever the improvement, it will be tangible and reproducible.