Promoting Active Learning: Strategies, Tools and Techniques
It is well known from all the research done by cognitive scientists and by leaders in the constructivist movement that students learn best by actively engaging in the learning process. Our own observations in classrooms, labs, clinical settings, and the workplace tell us the same thing.
 A Good Introduction to Active Learning (AL) is provided by this link to the Adams Centre for Teaching Excellence. It tells us what AL is, why it is important, and how to incorporate it into our teaching practice.
http://www.acu.edu/cte/activelearning/focus.htm
Popular Active Learning Strategies, Tools, and Techniques. Open up this link to see 11 common strategies, tools and techniques used to promote active learning in the classroom and lab. They have such intriguing titles as SNOWball technique, Think-Pair-Share, One Minute Paper and T-charts. Active Learning Chart
Want More? Here are 29 Active Learning Techniques from Donald Paulson and Jennifer Faust at California State University.
http://www.calstatela.edu/dept/chem/chem2/Active/
Free Concept Mapping Tool. Concept mapping is an excellent active learning strategy; it is in both of the lists presented above. Rudi Aksim has found a great free concept mapping tool. Here is the URL.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Asking and Answering Questions is another good technique for sustaining active learning environments. This site provides good tips on asking and answering questions, as well as examples of different types of questions.
http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/
teachtip/askquest.htm
 Socratic Questions. This site from changingminds.org provides examples of six types of questions: conceptual clarification questions, probing assumptions, probing rationales, reasons and evidence, questioning viewpoints and perspectives, probing implications and consequences, and questioning the questions.
http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/
socratic_questions.htm
E-Journaling: Achieving Interactive Education Online. 5 (Jonnie Jill Phipps in Educause Quarterly Volume 28 No. 1) An excellent 4-page resource for examining ways we can use a variety of types of journals to support the development of self-reflection. Many thanks to Mary Daniels, TALL Program.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eqm0519.pdf
Free Concept Mapping Tool. Concept mapping is an excellent active learning strategy; it is in both of the lists presented above. Rudi Aksim has found a great free concept mapping tool. Here is the URL.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
For more information about concept mapping, go to Concept Mapping in the Creating Specializes Learning Materials section of this web site.
For more tools and techniques related to supporting active learning, go to Designing Materials to Maximize the Learning Process also in the Creating Specializes Learning Materials section.
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