Embedded Files
Louis Deslauriers’s Sept 24 virtual talk began with his observation that effective active learning is rare because many of us haven’t learned how to facilitate it well. Coupled with the findings from his 2019 PNAS article—that students in active learning classrooms learned more than in lectures, but felt like they learned less—his work has me thinking about how often we misread the signals of real learning. Specifically, both students and faculty misread the discomfort inherent in active learning as a sign of failure:
When students find active learning difficult, they believe they're learning less because they’re struggling, wrestling with problems, and making mistakes.
When faculty see this discomfort in student feedback, they may interpret it as evidence that active methods aren’t working or aren't worth the effort.
This dynamic creates a feedback loop that becomes a trap: as both groups experience cognitive effort, they reinforce each other’s illusions about what effective learning and teaching should feel like. Unless both students and faculty are aware of these paradoxes of active learning, efforts to effectively engage students will stall, or remain shallow--at least this is what Deslauriers’s research suggests.
What do we do about this problem? I’m going to record a summary of my notes summarizing Deslauriers’s talk and integrating some recommendations. I’ll share it soon, so keep your eyes on the Monday morning “Faculty Commons Bulletin” emails.
October 2025
Page updated
Report abuse