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DESCRIPTION
Active learning is a term referring to the engagement of students in some way with the topic to be learned. Students can be physically or cognitively engaged in an activity (i.e. something more than passive listening to a lecture or reading a text). Working exercises or participating in group projects or pursuing the higher orders of Bloom's taxonomy such as "applying, analyzing, evaluating, or creating" are good examples of active learning. The Greenwood Dictionary of Education defines active learning as:
“The process of having students engage in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas and how they are using those ideas. Requiring students to regularly assess their own degree of understanding and skill at handling concepts or problems in a particular discipline. The attainment of knowledge by participating or contributing. The process of keeping students mentally, and often physically, active in their learning through activities that involve them in gathering information, thinking and problem solving.”
OBJECTIVE The objective of this workshop is to understand and be able to apply active learning principles in online teaching. A VISION OF STUDENTS TODAY Despite overwhelming research (and common sense) that passive learning is less effective than active learning, many classes emphasize passive approaches. Passive approaches emphasize:
Active approaches emphasize:
Research on Active Learning
---Does Active Learning Work? A Review of the Research http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.167.6544
--University of Michigan Center for Research on Teaching and Learning http://www.crlt.umich.edu/faculty/Thurnau/ThurnauVideos.php SOCIAL NETWORKING
Social networks are one way that students engage each other. Social networks can also provide ways for instructors to engage students and for students to engage the discipline. There is a potential for faculty members to use a variety of social networks to reach and engage students.
Transforming Pedagogy through Social SoftwareThe advent of Web 2.0 opens whole new horizons to the ways in which we can engage and interact with students. The technologies create the possibility to more fully implement active learning. Through social networking tools, we can expand "connectivity, communication, and participation." In the ning linked to the title of this posting, you will find an array of social software tools (with plenty of examples) of how the new online tools can create a new perspective for the pedagogy that drives our approach to teaching and learning.
Bloom's Taxonomy  Bloom's Taxonomy was recently revised in light of new research and the advent of digital resources as exemplified by the Web 2.0 technologies.  Bloom's Taxonomy verbs. Note that the descriptors for the "new" Bloom's Taxonomy are all verbs. There are some excellent lists of active verbs for the older taxonomy version. Some 25 years ago, Chickering and Gamson posted the Seven Principles of Effective Undergraduate Education:
Constructivism is basically a theory -- based on observation and scientific study -- about how people learn. It says that people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world, through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences. When we encounter something new, we have to reconcile it with our previous ideas and experience, maybe changing what we believe, or maybe discarding the new information as irrelevant. In any case, we are active creators of our own knowledge. To do this, we must ask questions, explore, and assess what we know. ~Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning - thirteen ed online  Active Learning PowerPoint - Oxymoron?You noticed, perhaps, that I am not using ppt. I find it confining, rigidly serial, and not inherently interactive. Blogs on the other hand are read online with hyperlinks active, easy to scroll through postings (the equivalent of ppt slides), have built-in comment functionality, provide built-in RSS feeding, and invite linking with other sites.
These features of blogs promote engagement, interactivity, reflection, review, commentary, linking to examples -- all qualities of active learning! Having written that, the linked site is one from the University of Minnesota about how one can make ppt a tool for active learning! Formative Assessments
Assessments can, themselves, provide active learning experiences!
Assessing Active Learning in Online Comparative Politics Classes http://www.apsanet.org/tlc2007/TLC07HamannPollockWilson.pdf Assessing Learning in Web-enhanced/Online Courses http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/assessment/online.html ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ For a stream of ideas of how to implement active learning in your classes, check out Ray's daily RSS feeds below!
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