Even when, to both teachers and students, lecturing appears to be working, (students intently listening, nodding heads, taking notes), what’s going on in the minds of students probably looks a lot like what would be going on on the boat full of my friends – distraction, lack of interest, and only a vague recollection of what was said. Even though it can appear that lecture-based, PowerPoint-driven learning is effective, it rarely is, and is almost never as effective a use of time
as the learning-by-doing approach that could be done in its stead.

- Roger Schank

University of Saskatchewan Definition
"Active Learning (AL) is an approach to teaching that incorporates one or more of the five elements of talking and listening, reading, writing, reflecting and creating into the engagement by learners in relevant and authentic tasks in a supportive environment. Compared to a traditional approach of passive information transmission, AL produces better learning, including concept formation; increased motivation; discovery of misconceptions; and the acquisition of knowledge, critical thinking, attitudes and values, and interpersonal skills. Case discussions are one example of active learning approaches. Therefore, the College of Medicine will incorporate into all course, programs, and individual teaching session opportunities for students to engage in AL. This does not mean that all teaching and learning will be given in small groups. AL can take place within the traditional large or a small group setting for short or long periods of time."


Students need to be actively involved mentally and/or physically in learning in order to move through the Learning Cycle. Out of every 100 items in a passive lecture, students will remember approximately 10. If you took the same amount of time to actively involve students, you might only cover 75 items, but students would remember approximately 15, also those 15 items are more likely to be linked storage that can be retrieved more effectively in the future. Listen to a podcast about this topic.


Think about the goal of teaching; is the goal for you to transmit information or is the goal students remembering/understanding information? If you believe it is transmission, how do you know that what you say is learned?

For ideas about Assessment, see Terms of Engagement a Framework for Assessing Different Modes of Student Interaction and Assessment.

The following slide show contains examples of active engagement in large medical classrooms.

Mental Engagement Examples	Physical Engagement Examples
Learning by Doing (article)	Acting/Roleplaying/Creating video/Creating Songs Creating Visualizations
Instructional Strategies For Engaging Learners -ideas for activating learning, strategies for helping students process and retain information, and ways for you to have your students summarize what they have learned	Virtual Autopsy
Teaching in Large Classrooms Technique Activities Techniques 2 PowerPoint Examples	Blackboard Problem Solving A student draws their solution/mindmap on the Blackboard
One Minute Paper Students write down their answer to an open ended question then hand it in, so you can check the level of concept formation in the class Muddiest Point Students write down what they had trouble understanding and hand it in at end of class	Active Review Teacher poses question and groups of students work on flip chart answer which is then posted so entire group can see. Technology Enabled Active Learning Podcasts
Write, Pair, Share Students write their answer individually, share the written answer with the person next to them and discuss in class. Jigsaw Each student is responsible for learning a piece of the whole project. Students then come together to fit the pieces together into a whole by teaching each other what they learned.	Songs Songs such as Colorectal Surgeon or Anaesthetists Hymn can be used as JOLTS to capture attention at the beginning of a session or as tension relievers at other points. Check out the list by clicking on the word songs.
Glossary of Instructional Strategies 988 ways to teach searchable in alphabetical order -including Compare and Contrast Graph Exaggeration Fishbone Mapping Negative Brainstorming Other Peoples Viewpoints	PowerPoint Games PowerPoint Issues Creating Animations in PowerPoint to Support Student Learning and Engagement Biology Animations
Using Humour - Scientific Method taught using the Holy Grail A Laughing Room Examples from university classes Journey to the Ballroom - development of testes Uterus - demonstrates the uterus	Medical Games Dr. Kanthan's Pathology Review Games Stumpers - word game
Using Questions to Stimulate Thinking Questions at the level of the learning objective can repeat memorized material, improve problem solving or promote reflection. 6 types of Socratic Questions	Crossword Puzzles Eclipse Create your own crossword Simple Crossword Puzzle Game
Intentional Reading (using focusing questions that will be answered during reading of text or articles) Examples Ask students to compare and contrast new content with something they already learned Identify a problem and ask how the reading addresses the problem.	Critical Thinking Strategies -35 Dimensions of Critical Thought from The Critical Thinking Community
Discussing (Structured Controversy)	Performing Experiments/Simulations
Case Studies A variety of resources are available at the link above.	Flashcards Memorize Now Medical Terminology on Quizlet or create your own flashcards Study Stack
Problem Solving	Labeling Diagrams
Cognitive Dissonance	Virtual Reality / Second Life
One minute paper	Interactive animations that respond to student action
Web 2.0 technology the interactive web	Performing Tasks/Procedures
Visualization Periodic Table of Visualization Methods a tool for deciding which technique to use to help students learn visually - great tool for using the right type of chart for example. More Visualization tools Wordle is a site for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text Worldometer provides up-to-minute world health statistics	Creating physical representations such as sculpture or Illness Scripts Argument Mapping Tutorial Graphic Organizers Photo editing tools (free, online) See knitted DNA image below.
Clickers (Student Response Systems)	Quintessential Instructional Archive Quia is a site for sharing game style medical resources.
Structuring the Reflective Process The use of reflection in medical education: AMEE Guide No. 44	Teaching Observation Skills
Wolfram Alpha - amazing calculation, analysis search tool	Voice Threads
VocabGrabber lets you automatically create lists of vocabulary from any text or e-learning script.

The following are a list of links to teaching ideas that actively engage students:

1. TIPS method
2. University of Arizona list
3. Project-based Medical Undergraduate Learning at McGill
4. Problem Based Learning
5. PBL at Queens
6. University of Alabama Teaching Support site
7. Medical Games
8. Success Types Medical Education Page
9. Death by PowerPoint
10. General resource page for images etc.
11. Student perceptions of active learning in a large cross-disciplinary classroom
12. PowerPoint
13. Ten Tips for Teaching
    

Return to Classroom Teaching Techniques
or The CASE Curriculum Model
or go on to Self Directed Learning
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