Guides for Learning and Teaching:
Designing for Active Learning
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Centre for Professional Learning and Development
Guides for Learning and Teaching
Designing for Active Learning
Introduction
In this guide, we consider how designing active learning opportunities can help
our students become more independent learners who are capable of meeting the
learning challenges they will meet not just at University, but throughout life.
We explore evidence from research into the impact of teaching approaches and
methods on how and what students learn, as well as identifying how you can
design more active learning opportunities in your own practice – even when you
might be teaching a module or course which someone else has designed for you.
The information and guidance is structured around a set of key questions:

How does the way we teach affect what and how our students learn – and
how?

What’s the difference between teaching methods that support active rather
than passive learning?

How can we use this information to generate a useful framework for designing
activities that support active learning?

What can we use and do to support active learning in our own teaching?

Will it work for every subject?
How this guide relates to the UKPSF and NTU Professional Standards for
Teaching and Supporting Learning in HE
Areas of Activity
Areas of Core Knowledge (Ks)
Professional Values (Vs)
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A1, A2, A4
K2, K3
V2, V3
1. How does the way we teach impact on what our students learn?
Research has shown that the teaching approaches used impact on the learning
approach, which students adopt and experience (Ramsden, 2003; Biggs 2003;
Biggs and Tang, 2007).
A surface approach to learning is characterised by a relatively superficial and
low level of cognitive engagement with the learning task. It can be summed up
as remembering and reproducing information without critically analysing and
evaluating it, or without creating new knowledge or ‘sense’. Or, in other words,
acquiring some knowledge without fully ‘knowing’ or ‘understanding’. Passive
teaching methods and activities are more likely to generate surface learning.
A deep approach, on the other hand, is characterised by more significant
engagement with the learning task and process, that generates and ‘knowing’
and ‘understanding’ at greater depth and scope or complexity.
In HE, we are typically expecting our students will achieve an understanding
much more characteristic of deep learning. And if you intend your students to be
deep learners then you need to adopt methods, which encourage that,
including:
1. Teaching & assessment methods, which foster their longer term &
active engagement with tasks
2. Stimulating & considerate teaching, which demonstrates tutor’s own
commitment, and stresses meaning & relevance of content
3. Clearly stated academic expectations
4. Opportunities to exercise responsible choice in method & content of
study
5. Methods that show and engage interest in & background knowledge of
subject matter
Race (2007, 3rd edition) discusses a number of factors or conditions which
support successful learning. See the CPLD Guide to Factors Supporting
Learning. We can create these conditions in our session by designing content
and learning activities that:
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Enables our students to see a relevant purpose towards what they
want and need to learn
Helps them learn to value what they are learning
Provides some variety to meet different needs and learning
preferences
Engage their active participation in an appropriate way that aligns with
what we are trying to get them to learn
Enables them to identify that it is OK to learn from mistakes
Enables them to learn constructively from their mistakes
Provides feedback that helps them learn from their mistakes
Builds their confidence
Gives them the means to monitor their own progress
Provides sufficient opportunity for practice, feedback, reflection,
consolidation
Provides sufficient challenge
Gives them some control and choice over how, what, and where they
learn
2. What’s the difference between teaching that supports active as
opposed to passive learning?
Achieving the conditions outlined earlier is much more likely when you use
teaching methods that support more active learning, as opposed to ones which
foster passive learning.
For instance, we can tell or show students something and hope they’ll remember
and understand. But is that enough to give them the best chance of doing so?
Both methods are typically passive and what occurs in many lectures for
instance – students listen and take notes, and the lecturer talks. Some people
can certainly take good notes but that doesn’t mean they are making sense of
what they are hearing, or generating understanding.
Alternatively, we can adopt more active approaches, in which we get the
students more actively engaged in their own learning as a means to enabling
them to learn more successfully. We create activities in which they explore, test
out, practise, investigate, experiment, make sense, identify for themselves and
help them make sense of what they are learning.
Activity 1 below aims to provide a simple illustration of the differences between
the two approaches.
Activity 1
Think of the different ways in which you could help someone achieve the
following learning outcome:
‘To successfully cook eggs in two different ways to produce healthy
meals’.
We could do this in several ways including:
A: Tell them how to do it
B: Show them a video of Jamie Oliver cooking eggs then ask them to identify
and explain two methods they have learned from the demonstration
C: Give them recipe books for inspiration, and ask them to demonstrate the two
methods to the other groups
D: Ask them to research (using any means they can find) two ways of cooking
eggs, and teach those methods to another group of students
Method A is a more passive in that it doesn’t give learners the opportunity to
discover information for themselves, at their own pace, nor does it indicate
anything that enables them to monitor and review their own progress.
Methods B, C and D are all more active as they require the students to actively
participate in doing something to work towards achieving the learning outcome –
albeit with different degrees of independence.
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3. Any other information that supports using active methods?
Traditional use of the passive method of transmitting information through speech
is very challenging for anyone – whether they are sitting listening in a lecture hall
or watching a video of someone talking.
Bligh (1971 – see Figure 6.1 below) showed how energy levels in any session dip
typically after 15/20 minutes, and continue to decline unless there is a change of
activity to re-energise.
Most of us need a mental break every 15-20 mins or so as concentration and
learning ‘dip’ – so if you are doing an hour’s session, it’s good to switch focus two
or three times. Active learning methods provide us with a much larger variety of
methods we can use to generate different types of learning activities (other than
talking at students) to provide some variety to maintain energy and focus even in
lectures.
Also worth remembering to allow time for your students to arrive, settle at the
start, and get out to their next session in sufficient time.
In a typical hour that means there are 5 segments to your session:
0-5 minutes
time for students to get in and settle
5-20 minutes
beginning section
20-40 minutes
middle section
40-55 minutes
end section
Last 5 minutes
time to get out to let new class in
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4. A useful framework for designing to support active learning
In any session, whatever the learning intention, we should create the conditions
which support successful learning by doing things that:
 Enable our students to see the value and relevance of the topic for them
 Stimulate their curiosity and desire to know more
 Get them learning by doing
 Provide them with feedback on their learning and progress
 Provides them with feedback that helps them digest and make sense of what
they are learning
Some important points about learning by doing….
It all depends what you’re doing! Just getting students busy doing something
isn’t the same as ensuring that what they are doing is helping them learn.
There is some cross-over here with Kolb’s learning cycle (Kolb, 1995). A
useful framework for achieving this in your sessions is to include learning
activities that enable your students to complete all the stages:
 An opportunity to do something
 An opportunity to reflect on, and analyse what they have done
 An opportunity to digest, conceptualise and create meaning from those
reflections
 An opportunity to identify implications for future practice
Bloom’s taxonomy of learning (Bloom et al 1956 in Atherton 2009) shows us
that the foundation for more complex learning is always a more surface type
of learning. For instance, within the psychomotor domain, we often start to
learn to do something by copying what others do, without actually also
understanding whether it’s the best way to do it, or where the method
originates. Likewise in the cognitive domain, we can ‘know’ things well
enough to identify them or explain them, without being able to critically
evaluate, apply or adapt them.
Activity 2
Look back to the methods in Activity 1 of the different ways in which you could
help someone achieve the following learning outcome:
‘To successfully cook eggs in two different ways to produce healthy meals’.
What activities could you design to enable students address all 4 stages of
experiential learning outlined above for this learning outcome?
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5. Things you can use and do to support more engaging, stimulating &
active learning activities
Analogies
Use these to relate an unfamiliar topic to something more familiar and
interesting to them. Think of analogies that would be most familiar to your
students. More active approach – ask if they can see any analogies for
themselves and share them.
Anecdotes & ‘Did you know…’
Relating tales from your own experience can bring a subject to life. Even
better – relate it to their experiences; ask them to share their experiences of
something, and if they haven’t had any relevant ones, then create the
opportunity for them to experience it for themselves. Use real-life cases to
inject life into a subject or introduce an aspect in more memorable and
accessible ways. Find out some unusual facts or trivia about the people
students are reading about – more likely to remember them, and can
stimulate their curiosity (eg did you know that Einstein was dyslexic?’). More
active approach – ask them to see what they can find.
Illustrate, illustrate, Illustrate.
These help your students create meaning and so help your teaching of a
subject be more engaging and purposeful to them, as well as sparking
interest. Source these from TV programmes, radio programmes, magazines,
journals, friends and family podcasts, exhibitions, photographs, blogs, DVDs,
learning resources online. More active if you ask them to find/create ones.
Use these to create:
 real-life case studies
 examples from your own practice and other people’s
 demonstrate something yourself or show clip of someone else doing it
 use illustrations provided by other University colleagues and made
available through Learning Repositories (eg MERLOT, JORUM, NTU
Repository)
Use Acronyms and Mnemonics
They help us remember and recall quicker, leaving more time to spend on
understanding and applying! For example, a first word mnemonic would be
SWOT – for a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis used
in planning. Alternatively you might use other words to remember key first
letters of something. For example, Richard Of York Gave Battle in Vain is
used to recall the colour sequence of the light spectrum Red, Orange, Yellow,
Green, Blue and Violet. More active if you ask them to invent/share the
ones they find.
Use Glossaries
To encourage students to check for themselves – even more active
approach, - ask them to generate the glossary or guides for
themselves, or the next group.
Use Gapped Handouts
This helps with note-taking and encourages more active learning – provide
them with a hand-out that has key headings and questions – they then need
to attempt to fill in the gaps and answer Qs from what they hear and see in
the lecture. (You can follow this up in workshops, labs and seminars later).
More active approach – ask them to work in pairs to evaluate each
other’s notes – they can learn from each other.
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Humour
Can be a tricky one, especially if you don’t feel comfortable in front of large
groups of people. You certainly don’t have to become a comedian nor do you
have to tell jokes. But just show you’re human – if you slip up during a
session, acknowledge it in a light-hearted way eg ‘and as you’ve realised, that
was a great demonstration of how NOT to do it…now would anyone like to
show me how it should be done?’. Or can you find something humorous that
relates to the topic you are teaching? For example: cartoons, short clips online; anecdotes and stories. Take care not to put down, mock or offend
anyone. If in doubt – check, or leave it out. More active approach – ask
them to find/create and share a cartoon which sums up the learning
points or concept.
Demonstrate something and then get them to try it. More active
approach – ask for volunteers to demonstrate to other students.
Ask your students to investigate and research something for themselves
using a set of questions as prompts; then present their findings to others
(either through posters, presentations, reports, either in class or on-line)
To create a short reflective break and change of pace, ask them individually to
do a ‘one-minute paper’ – this involves getting them to write down without
stopping to worry about punctuation, structure, spelling etc anything they can
remember or questions they have as result of what they have just been
taught. You can vary this to anything 1-5 mins, but no longer as they run out
of steam generally.
Problem-solving exercises – start with a test to help focus their attention
and realise what they know/don’t know
Ask them to illustrate something they have learned. In any form eg poem,
song, play, illustration, poster.
Brainstorming to generate as many different ideas on what something
means, or how to tackle a problem – then get them to evaluate/critique
contributions
Short on-line quizzes and tests that provide them with feedback on both
correct and incorrect answers to help them consolidate and review learning at
their own pace
Organise a more structured debate to enable them to explore an issue from
different perspectives – or do this in a discussion or presentation
Give them exemplars of assessments and ask them to mark them against
the assessment criteria
Get them to critique and comment on each other’s assignments or
reports
Ask them to try to answer the questions asked in class instead of you
Get them to generate a set of questions to ask each other
Ask them to work in groups to generate their own model or concept to
explain something
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Get them in pairs to teach something to each other
Ask them to design experiments and evaluate findings. Or they can
evaluate the design of each other’s experiments and research approaches.
Get them a learning outcomes and ask them to design part or all of a
session
Select a different person/group to give a 3 minute summary of the
previous session as part of the introduction at the next session. You can do
the same with summing-up a session at the end.
Activity 4
Look back at the methods in Activity 1 of the different ways in which you could
help someone achieve the following learning outcome:
‘To successfully cook eggs in two different ways to produce healthy meals’.
Which method would you choose and why?
What learning activities would you now design for that?
6. Will it work for every subject?
You might be tempted to think that learning by doing is only for certain subjects
and not others – but it isn’t. If grappling with a philosophical concept, you can be
told what to think, or you can have a go at working something out for yourself
and making sense through discussion with others.
Just getting our students doing things is not the same as learning though – we
also have to design activities in which they can digest, make sense and
consolidate their learning from any tasks they perform or other exercises in which
they participate. Designing in those opportunities to our sessions is part of our
role as tutor. We can fall into the trap of selecting methods based on what we
are familiar with, or like doing ourselves. (Not a problem if they support active
learning.) Take care to avoid relying on passive methods used on you.
Resources need to be considered - location, equipment, time, our and our
students’ abilities, as well as habits of our peers and course custom and practice.
Some adaptations are necessary, but you can still avoid passive methods. Aim to
be as creative as possible within the constraints and challenge constructively any
assumptions you might be making about what you can/cannot do.
Don’t be afraid to experiment.
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Where can I get further ideas?
At NTU, we are developing more active learning for larger groups of students
through the Scale-Up initiative. Please see the Scale-Up section of the CADQ
website for further information.
CPLD events and programmes - further information in the Course Directory
section of the CPLD website.
References
BIGGS, J., and Tang, C., 2007 (3rd edition). Teaching for Quality Learning at
University. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Atherton, J., (2009), Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning at
https://now.ntu.ac.uk/d2l/lms/content/preview.d2l?tId=340854&ou=101495
(last accessed 12.8.2011)
More on Bloom’s taxonomy at
http://www.businessballs.com/bloomstaxonomyoflearningdomains.htm
(last accessed 12.8.2011)
EXLEY, K., and DENNICK, R., 2004. Giving a Lecture: From Presenting to
Teaching. Abingdon: Routledge Falmer
GIBBS, G., HABESHAW, S., and HABESHAW T., 1988 (3rd edition). Interesting
Things to do In Your Lectures. Bristol: Technical and Educational Services Ltd.
HABESHAW, S., GIBBS, G., and HABESHAW T., 1992 (4th edition). Interesting
Things to do In Your Seminars and Tutorials. Bristol: Technical and Educational
Services Ltd.
KOLB, D., (1995) in http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm
Viewed 26.10.2011
RACE, P., 2014 (4th edition). The Lecturer’s Toolkit: A Practical Guide to
Assessment, Learning and Teaching. Abingdon: Routledge
Link to NTU’s Centre for Academic Development and Quality’s website resources
on two concepts related to active learning:
SCALE UP project - based on a model of practice from the USA using particular
room layout and access to laptops in sessions to support flipped classroom
approach in which students carry out active investigative work in sessions
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/adq/teaching/scale_up/support_resources/index.html
Flipped Classroom concept
http://www.ntu.ac.uk/adq/document_uploads/teaching/154084.pdf
CPLD, January 2015
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