Practicing Active Learning in the Online Classroom

By: Vincent King-Spezzo, Ed.D.
Georgia Institute of Technology

&
Amy R. Austin, Ph.D.
USG eCampus

While the tools, drive, and need exist for incorporating active learning into the online classroom, you may still be struggling with figuring out where to start. Fink (2013) offers several examples of active learning activities that you can easily implement into most online classrooms including:

Incorporating simple active learning activities into virtual lectures
Using authentic activities as assignments
Creating opportunities for students to experience by observing either synchronously or asynchronously
Building in reflection activities as part of assignments or using reflection as its own assignment

rethinking the Virtual lecture

Whether your online lectures take the form of a pre-recorded video that students watch as part of a module, or as a live web-based meeting where students meet synchronously with you, there is a tendency to provide a lecture much in the same way that you would in a traditional classroom. This usually involves an instructor relaying information to students or working through material in some fashion and may or may not include additional visual aids such as PowerPoint. While this method has served education well for some time, it is in its core a very passive means of learning. The good news is that, whether recording a lecture or providing a live web conference, there are various active learning techniques that you can easily adapt to enhance your lecture and turn it into a more engaging experience for your students.

Below is a chart of various active learning activities from experts along with suggestions for how you could incorporate those activities into your online courses in either a synchronous or asynchronous manner (Middendorf & Kalish, 1996).

Suggestions for Online Activities in Synchronous and Asynchronous Courses

Engaging Students with Authentic Activities

One key component in a good active learning activity is that it allows students to engage with material in a real-world sense. This, in turn, means that authentic assessments tend to serve as excellent active learning exercises. Depending on your discipline, this can be done directly by assigning students to perform a real task in real life and document their activity, or finding to share online with the rest of the class. Common examples of this are more readily found in practical science classes where students can go out and examine a biological organism in their surrounding area, collect samples of rocks for an environmental science class, or conduct at-home experiments using various kits. There are, however, plenty of other disciplines that can utilize authentic assignments such as a writing or communications class having students create and manage a blog or an advertising class having students go out into the community and partner with a local business to create a flyer.

With some disciplines or topics, it is either not feasible/safe/ethical for students to engage in a direct authentic activity. For example, first-year Psychology students would not necessarily be permitted to examine or interact with patients at a mental health clinic nor would it be very easy for students in an Earth Science class to directly sample or interact with an active volcano. For those instances where direct experience is not advised or possible, there are techniques for doing authentic activities in an indirect way. These techniques include:

Case Studies

Used extensively in Psychology and many other disciplines, case studies allow for students to read about a real-life person, place, or event in detail and then examine the case and come to their own conclusions. These are some of the easiest to do online as they simply involve finding a case for students to study either as a group or individually and write about it or discuss the case via a discussion board. The key to a good case study activity is to find a good case study that contains enough detail for students to really understand the case and make a well-informed response to it.

Simulations

Used extensively with nursing students, simulations are constructed to represent a real situation or event and allow students to work through it while remaining in a safe environment. A huge benefit of a simulation is that students can often repeat them as many times as they need to gain a better understanding of what they are intended to learn. There are many tools that can be used online to help create a simulation, such as Articulate or Softchalk, and some disciplines such as nursing or even chemistry have virtual simulations programs already created and marketed specifically for their discipline’s use. As virtual reality becomes more mainstream, you are likely to see many more simulations begin to emerge for various disciplines.

Role Play

Whether using a direct or indirect method, the key with authentic activities is that the material being learned should require the student to actually do the task in a real-life setting. Examine the below list of authentic activity characteristics and see if you come up with an authentic activity that would work for your own discipline.

Common Characteristics of Authentic Activities

The final kind of active learning activity that works well online is the technique of reflection. This technique is one that you may have already used in an online course without knowing that it was an active learning technique. In its simplest form, reflecting/reacting involves students reviewing some material, such as a video or a reading assignment, and then posting their reaction to the material on a group or class-wide discussion board or as part of a periodical journal. The act of composing a reaction to some subject encourages a student to think more deeply about the material and compile their thoughts. This alone helps students to actively engage in the material and helps build a deeper sense of learning for the subject. Discussion of this nature and new ways to go about them are discussed later in this module.

Another method of reflection/reaction that is starting to appear as a new type of active learning concept is called “Reacting to the Past.” First introduced by Dr. Mark C. Carnes (1995) as a means to elevate his American History classes, it has since been utilized by various other courses across multiple disciplines. Reacting to the Past consists of multiple detailed games and activities, set in a specific time and place that has relevance to the material being studied. Students take on the role of the individuals from the past and drive class sessions through their interactions and engagement with one another as they work through a historical problem or other activity. Students are advised and guided by the instructor, but the class itself does not have a fixed script. Instead, the actions that occur are largely dependent on the students. This type of immersive learning really brings together several types of active learning including reflecting/reacting, role playing, and in some cases, observation.

While this type of activity seems to be geared towards a traditional classroom, there are ample opportunities to adapt this to an online environment through usage of shared simulation programs, in character web-conferencing, and even in character discussion postings. If you’d like to explore more about reacting to the past, you can visit their website.

From Herrington, Oliver, and Reeves (2003)

Authentic activities...

Have real-world relevance: Activities match as nearly as possible with the real-world tasks of professionals in practice, rather than decontextualized or classroom-based tasks.
Are ill-defined, requiring students to define the tasks and sub-tasks needed to complete the activity: Problems inherent in the activities are not explicitly defined for students and are open to multiple interpretations rather than easily solved by the application of existing algorithms. Learners must identify their own unique tasks and sub-tasks in order to complete the major task.
Comprise complex tasks to be investigated by students over a sustained period of time: Activities are completed in days, weeks, and months rather than minutes or hours. They require significant investment of time and intellectual resources.
Provide the opportunity for students to examine the task from different perspectives, using a variety of resources: The task affords learners the opportunity to examine the problem from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, rather than allowing a single perspective that learners must imitate to be successful. The use of a variety of resources, rather than a limited number of preselected references, requires students to detect relevant from irrelevant information.
Provide the opportunity to collaborate: Collaboration is integral to the task, both within the course and the real world, rather than achievable by an individual learner.
Provide the opportunity to reflect: Activities need to enable learners to make choices and reflect on their learning both individually and socially.
Can be integrated and applied across different subject areas and lead beyond domain-specific outcomes: Activities encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and enable students to play diverse roles, thus building robust expertise rather than knowledge limited to a single well-defined field or domain.
Are seamlessly integrated with assessment: Assessment of activities is seamlessly integrated with the major task in a manner that reflects real-world assessment, rather than separate artificial assessment removed from the nature of the task.
Create polished products valuable in their own right, rather than as preparation for something else: Activities culminate in the creation of a whole product rather than an exercise or sub-step in preparation for something else.
Allow competing solutions and diversity of outcome: Activities allow a range and diversity of outcomes open to multiple solutions of an original nature, rather than a single correct response obtained by the application of rules and procedures.

Experiencing Through Observation

While experiencing through doing an authentic activity is seen as a staple for active learning, there is still much that a student can gain through observation. In some cases, students would still be too novice to actually do the activity being observed, such as if the case would be for first-year nursing students, and in these instances it is better for students to still observe a real-life activity than simply read about it. These observations can take either a direct form, such as job shadowing a librarian, or indirect form, such as watching a video of a veterinarian perform a routine examination. With online courses, the indirect method will be more readily available for most students, but encouraging them to seek out a local in their chosen field to job shadow could be a very rewarding experience.

Interviewing

Under the realm of observation is the concept of interviewing individuals in the field related to the course or topic being discussed. Interviewing can occur as a one-on-one activity if there are enough individuals that students could easily access, such as nurses or school principals. For cases where the field is very narrow or individuals are few or hard to access, such as a United States senator or rocket scientist, consider holding a class-wide interview instead so all students can benefit. This can either occur synchronously via a web conference system with the students asking questions and the instructor serving as a moderator, or you can conduct a type of asynchronous interview via your course's discussion board.

Popularized in recent years by the social discussion website, Reddit, the technique of interviewing someone via a discussion board of user-submitted questions is referred to as an Ask Me Anything (AMA). An AMA in this context would involve first telling students about the person being interviewed, providing them some background information, and then letting them know when that individual will be online to answer questions. Students can then post their questions to the indicated discussion board and then the individual being interviewed goes online at the specified time and answers the various questions that are asked. Sometimes if both the interviewee and the person asking the question are online at the same time, they can respond back and forth on the discussion board to ask follow-up questions or react to responses. Often this way of interviewing is great for online students who may not be able to commit to a specific time and additionally often allows for more questions to be addressed overall.

Reflecting and Reacting

Reacting to the Past

Dispelling the Myth: Creatively Using Tools for Engagement

The Myth

Promoting active learning helps to dispel the myth that the online student merely sits in front of their computer. By doing things such as assigning group projects, case studies, or gathering and analyzing data helps to promote active learning (Dahl, 2015). Instructors also have the opportunity to use tools such as Google Forms to facilitate simulated assignments. Fenton (2017) noted that Google Classrooms are also a way to bridge the gap on the online class environment. Other ideas include gaming and badging certificates (adding badges to your courses), timely feedback to discussion posts, and improved course accessibility.

Tools for Engagement

Tools available within the course’s Learning Management System (LMS) also contribute to the enrichment of the active learning experience. The following are examples of tools that can be used to enrich the students' online learning experience:

Adobe Connect
Blackboard Collaborate
Canvas
Coursera
Google Documents
instaGrok
Kahoot
Plotly
Prezi
Skype

Desire2Learn (D2L) Tools

Specific tools provided within the D2L platform are:

Assessment Builder – Provides the ability to create Objective-Oriented Assessments; the assessments are created with a competency structure and measures student achievement of learning objectives through completion of associated learning activities (Gearhart, 2010).
Blackboard Collaborate - To be used for students to complete group work, review previously recorded web conferences, and used as a meeting platform for student-to-student or instructor-to-student interactions.
Discussion Boards - To be used to create robust discussion threads (see topic in Module 2: Online Discussions).
Library Access (Galileo) – Embedded as a tool to be used for research.

Conclusion/Wrap-up

When online education was first introduced, educators were skeptical…after all, how would a student effectively achieve course objectives and learning outcomes without being face-to-face and having interaction with a live instructor in a traditional (brick and mortar) setting? Over time, online education has evolved, and higher education institutions find that offering a variety of online programs actually allows the institution to remain competitive in the education industry. Students certainly have choices when it comes to determining where they will pursue their education. In addition, research supports the idea that a student is going to choose a program based on the reputation for quality, price, and the overall rating of the perceived learning experience.

The literature has a plethora of case studies and empirical research that discusses how innovative approaches to education have become necessary to enhance the students' learning experience and to support student success in the online environment. Clarke, Mayo, Bryant, and Awadzi (2017) conducted a study and surmised that, “...students who are actively involved are engaged and motivated to complete assignments” (p. 34). While well-designed course materials are important, well-connected learning activities ultimately impact the student’s level of engagement.

Notably, this lesson points out (through review of the literature) that the degree to which student engagement can be measured varies. Nevertheless, scholars do agree that students demonstrate engagement by completing authentic learning assignments, participating in online discussion threads, and working on real-world problems (through group work).

Research continues to evolve when it comes to understanding the notion of promoting active learning in the online space. As online learning has become a norm in higher education, it is important to understand how to quickly and effectively engage a student so that they do not dread accessing their online courses.

Over the coming years, it is expected that institutions in higher education will continue to test the boundaries of the online classroom by using innovative techniques for allowing students to complete their online courses. The idea of active learning continues to resonate across the globe, and as technology advances, supporting active learning will continue to be the pillar that allows students to succeed in the online environment.