Blog Ten - Active Learning
One of the most critical aspects of education is the effectiveness of what students are learning and how instructors ensure that students understand the material they are taught. A way to do this is known as Active Learning. Active learning is meant to “engage students in learning, beyond listening, reading, and memorizing,” as mentioned by The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning’s article titled “Active Learning.” Listening, reading, and memorizing are known as “passive learning” techniques since they do not actively have the students analyzing the information. The main difference between the two is that active learning aims to teach through application, while passive learning is meant to teach through listening. Both carry their respective skills, as Active Learning helps students think critically, while Passive Learning allows for structured memorization and better listening skills. Techniques can include making flashcards, having a debate, discussion prompts, or anything that has the student actively reflecting on the material.
According to the Cambridge International Education Teaching and Learning Team article “Getting Started with Active Learning," one of the cited benefits of active learning” is that it “develops students’ autonomy and their ability to learn.” The reason this is so pivotal in a student’s future career endeavors is that it encourages them to take charge of their learning, and the more that students practice learning new concepts by themselves and the more that they can do it independently, the easier it will be once they are out of college to learn new things and skills. In essence, Active Learning techniques pave the way for students to become lifelong learners in the future. Plus, active learning prevents students from having the “illusion of knowledge,” as is described in John Hopkins University’s “Active Versus Passive Learning.” This means that students actually have a very superficial understanding of the concept and cannot truly analyze it or have long-term retention of the material. In contrast, Active Learning means that students will learn effectively and more hands-on, allowing them to have a better understanding and an easier time analyzing and understanding the material.
Despite this, actually implementing more Active Learning techniques will likely prove to be a challenge. The idea may or may not be better on paper. To begin with, active learning techniques like discussions or diagramming can be used to simulate active learning. However, they are going to absorb significant time away from content knowledge time and curriculum standard review. And students are only given seven hours in a school day, which they need to make count for them. Teachers must review a lot of necessary content in a school year, so it would be quite complicated to use many of these active learning techniques without sacrificing valuable time. Besides taking up students’ time, it would also take up a lot of time in the teachers’ work lives. Educators are already quite overworked, so it would be unfair to demand more of them without compensating them fairly. In fact, according to the National Education Association’s article “Survey: Teachers Work More Hours Per Week Than Other Working Adults,” teachers work around seven hours more than the average working adult every week. Teachers already have to face high demands, and placing even more expectations on them would essentially be failing one of the most influential groups of people. After all, educators are the ones who are preparing the future generation to make decisions for themselves and eventually occupy positions of power and lead. The future policymakers, presidents, and world leaders are currently being shaped by their teachers and mentors. Pushing more work onto them would give them less time and energy to produce good-quality work and teach well, so we need to maintain a balance between effective teaching techniques and the practicality of implementing them.
Active learning, as well as passive learning, facilitate the development of specific subsets of skills in their own right. Active learning encourages analytical thinking and a more critical understanding of the material. At the same time, passive learning is more efficient in conveying large quantities of information in a structured way and allows students to build up their listening and rote memorizing skills. Nevertheless, both have their flaws as well. And we must also consider the practicality of implementing both of them. Passive learning is definitely the easiest of the two to implement, which is likely why it’s the most common. Striking a balance between the analytical understanding that comes with active learning and the increased amount of content that can be taught with passive learning is the key to an effective education.