Academic & Student Affairs

Active Learning Examples

There are many challenges facing teachers in Higher Education, including the size and diversity of the student body, the potential of new technologies and students as fee-payers who ‘expect the highest quality of service in return for ever increasing fees’ (Rogers, 2009, p13). These pressures, coupled with research and fund-seeking requirements, people management and committee demands, mean that making time to prepare, deliver and reflect upon teaching and learning is difficult.

However, as Doyle (2008, p3-4) indicates, devoting time to teaching and learning is important:

“Despite all of the potential factors that, on any given day, can negatively affect students’ learning, teachers who know how to create community, engage students actively in their learning, make content challenging and interesting, teach students how to learn the content, give students choices about what and how they learn, and make the learning meaningful, do positively affect students’ learning.”

Effective Teaching, Effective Learning

Effective learning is facilitated by effective teaching. Doyle (2008, p4) goes as far as to suggest that effective teaching ‘creates the greatest opportunity for students to learn the skills and acquire the knowledge our ... university [staff] have identified as the most important for them to know’.

Biggs (2003, p27) proposes that the foundation of effective learning is the ‘constructive alignment’ of learning activities and assessment with the intended learning outcomes. The explicit learning outcomes should be focused on the desired level of understanding, with the ‘balance between different teaching methods and modalities based on the learning outcomes of the curriculum’ (Exley & Dennick, 2009, p5). The chosen ‘assessment tasks address the objectives, so that you can test to see if the students have learned what the objectives state they should be learning,’ (Biggs, 2003, p27).

Constructive Alignment - The Triangle of Effective Learning

Learner-centered

So if effective teaching is that which brings about ‘effective and successful student learning that is deep and meaningful’, (Havita, 2000, p11) the focus for planning, implementation and reflection on teaching must be learner not teacher centred. This learner-centred posture means ‘subjecting every teaching activity (method, assignment or assessment) to the test of a single question:

“Given the context of my students, course, and classroom, will this teaching action optimise my students’ opportunity to learn?”’, (Doyle, 2008, p4).

The pages in this section seek to support the development of good teaching and learning practices at Queen’s University:

Active and interactive learning strategies
Group work
Problem-based learning
Supporting laboratory practicals
Field Work
Encouraging creativity

Useful resources

APA (1997) Learner-centered psychological principles, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association

Biggs, J. (2003, 2nd ed.) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Maidenhead: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press

Doyle, T. (2008) Helping students learn in a learner-centered environment. A guide to facilitating learning in Higher Education, Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing LLC

Hartley, P., Woods, A., and Pill, M. (2005) (eds) Enhancing Teaching in Higher Education: New approaches for improving student learning, London; New York: Routledge

Hativa, N. (2000) Teaching for Effective Learning in Higher Education, Dordrecht; Boston; London: Kluwer Academic Publishers

Light, G.; Cox, R. & Calkins, S. (2009, 2nd edition) ‘Learning and Teaching in Higher Education’, London: Sage

References

Biggs, J. (2003, 2nd Ed.) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Maidenhead: The Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press

Doyle, T. (2008) Helping students learn in a learner-centered environment. A guide to facilitating learning in Higher Education, Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing LLC

Exley, K. and Dennick, R.G. (2009, 2nd Ed.) Giving a lecture: from Presenting to Teaching, Abingdon, Oxon.; New York: Routledge

Falconer, I. and Littlejohn, A. (2007) ‘Designing for blended learning, sharing and reuse’, Journal of Further and Higher Education, 31, (1), pp.41-52