Active Learning

When planning active learning activities, instructors should consider how an activity may advance course learning objectives. You may consider what the goals of the activity are, what time frame you want to set, and whether students should create an end product — whether in the form of notes, poll responses, or questions. 

When designing an active learning activity, it is important to have a clear execution plan to share with students. Before beginning the activity, explain its goal and make sure that students understand how it connects to course learning objectives. Provide students with a clear time frame and a description of the end product they are expected to create — whether in the form of notes, poll responses, or questions that emerge from discussion. Field any questions students may have before time starts. 

After implementing a new activity, collect feedback from students to understand whether the activity was meaningful and effective in advancing learning. You can then modify the activity based on student responses for future iterations.

Instructors should incorporate active learning activities throughout the course so that students become acquainted with the learning format. After implementing a new activity, collect feedback from students to understand whether the activity was meaningful and effective in advancing learning. You can then modify the activity based on student responses for future iterations. 

Instructors should explain the purpose of active learning activities to students so they can know what to expect throughout the learning process. By incorporating lessons learned from active learning into class assignments and assessments, you can also help students understand the value of insights gained from practice and experience.

Setting plays an important role in students’ educational experiences. Consider utilizing Active Learning Classrooms (ALCs), which are spaces configured to maximize active, collaborative learning and multimodal teaching through flexible seating, surrounding whiteboards, and digital displays. Yale has several ALCs that instructors can reserve, including a Technology-Enabled Active Learning classroom (TEAL), which features 14 round tables that can accommodate 126 students, 14 flat screen displays, 5 projection screens, and 8 whiteboards. Research has shown that ALCs improve student satisfaction with education and encourage innovation and creativity (Chiu and Cheng, 2016).

However, active learning can be practiced effectively in any setting, whether it be a traditional lecture hall or an online course. In fact, active learning techniques can be particularly useful in promoting student engagement in online settings (Khan et al., 2017).

• Artifact or Data or Primary Source Analysis: Use an object, an image, a graph, primary source, etc. from your discipline and present it on a slide and invite students to explore the artifact through the lens of a specific concept or question from your discipline. Students may explore individually or with someone sitting close by and then the instructor asks for a few volunteers in the audience to share.
• Collaborative Note-Taking: Pause during lecture and ask students to take a few minutes to summarize in writing what they learned during class. Students then exchange notes with a partner to compare and catch key ideas that a student might have missed or misunderstood. The instructor can then field clarifying questions.
• Decision-Making Activity: Ask students to imagine that they are policy-makers who must make and justify tough decisions. Provide a short description of a thorny problem, ask them to work with a partner to arrive at a decision, and then call on several pairs to share their decisions and explain their reasoning. 
• Demonstrations: Ask students to predict the result of a demonstration, briefly discussing with a neighbor. After demonstration, ask them to discuss the observed result and how it may have differed from their prediction; follow up with instructor explanation. This approach asks students to test their understanding of a system by predicting an outcome. If their prediction is incorrect, it helps them see the misconception and thus prompts them to restructure their mental model. 
• The Pause Procedure: Pause for two minutes every 12 to 18 minutes, encouraging students to discuss and rework notes in pairs. This approach encourages students to consider their understanding of the lecture material, including its organization. 
• Polls: You can quickly poll students by asking them to answer a multiple choice question to check for their understanding from a previous class session or to check for understanding of what you taught in class that day via  Poll Everywhere (PE). PE also enables you to ask students a broader range of questions than multiple choice such as vote up or down/short answer/word cloud/etc. Answers can be anonymous, so students are not worried about providing the wrong answer. PE does require a phone, tablet or computer to answer. If you’d prefer a low-tech alternative, try having students vote by raising their hands. 
• Retrieval Practice: Pause for two or three minutes every 15 minutes, having students write everything they can remember from the preceding class segment. Encourage questions. 
• Strip Sequence: Provide students the steps in a process on strips of paper that are out of order or presented out of order on a slide deck; ask them to work in pairs or individually to reconstruct the proper sequence. This approach can strengthen students’ logical thinking processes and test their mental model of a process. 

• Believing and Doubting Close Reading Exercise: Students are asked to be “believers” and read a passage of a text empathetically, making conscious effort to understand the author’s perspective and values, listing arguments to support the author’s views.  Students are then asked to be “doubters” rereading the text for weaknesses, listing objections.
• Debates: Divide class in half and assign each half of the class a position on a topic or issue. Give students approximately 15 minutes to prepare an argument for their position. After 15 minutes, have each side share their position. After each side provides their “Opening Argument,” each side must then prepare to respond to the opposition’s argument. This part requires members of the groups to carefully listen to and reconstruct the opposition’s argument. After each side provides their criticisms of the opposition’s position, each group then has the opportunity to respond to the criticisms (give students approximately 10 minutes for students to prepare their responses to this as well).
• Fishbowl: You will need a small group of volunteers to be “in” the “fishbowl” to participate in the activity. The rest of the class are “outside” of the “fishbowl” and observe the activity take place. The most common configuration is an “inner ring” (Group A), which is the discussion group, surrounded by an “outer ring” (Group B), which is the observation group. The “outer ring” observes the “inner ring.” Group A is given an assignment, such as a discussion or exercise to perform, while Group B observes. After 10 to 30 minutes, the groups switch (Group A observes while Group B performs the activity, a modified version of the activity, or a new activity).
• Jigsaw: During the prior class, assign each student a reading on which to become an “expert” for the next class.  During the next class, put students into expert groups to decide what they will teach to the other students who did not read their assigned reading. After experts have decided their piece of the puzzle (aka their reading), mix the groups up so there is one expert from each reading group in new jigsaw groups to put all the pieces of the varied readings together. Hence the jigsaw. Experts now teach others in their newly formed groups. 
• Pro/Con Grids: Pick a topic that lends itself to the idea of making lists of pros and cons/advantages and disadvantages for some issue. Break students up into small groups. Have the groups come up with at least three points for each side. Once students have had time to complete the activity, bring the class back together to share and discuss points on each side.
• Role Play: Assign students specific but complex roles in a scenario with multiple stakeholders and perspectives. They should have real world complexities, have a problem to which they must respond, a possible debate to have, or a collaborative decision to make as a group.  Enact the role play but make sure to have time after to discuss the lessons learned.
• Service Learning: Students apply knowledge gained in the classroom through projects that support community-based initiatives and organizations. For example, instructors may organize opportunities for students to conduct oral history interviews or design a website for a nonprofit.
• Structured Academic Controversy: This is an active learning approach that encourages students to take on and argue for, alternately, BOTH sides of a controversial issue and ultimately come up with a balanced opinion about that issue. Students work in pairs to become familiar with one side of an issue, and then debate with another pair who has become familiar with the opposing side. Pairs then switch “sides,” become familiar with the opposing argument, and debate again. Finally, the two pairs come together to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each side of the argument, come to a consensus about their collective opinion about the argument, and present that idea to the other quads. 

• Case Studies: Provide the students with a real-world case for them to study (e.g. a news article, account of a decision or procedure, video, etc.). Alternatively, have students find their own case to examine. Individually, or in small groups in a seminar and pairs in a lecture, have students analyze the case using guidelines and a framework provided by you. Have students share their analysis with the class via a discussion portion of the class.  After discussion, ensure that the group has learned how the case study illustrates application of theoretical or background concepts from course material.
• Categorizing Grids: Give students several important categories and a list of scrambled terms, images, equations, or other items. Students sort the terms into the correct categories.
• Concept Map: Provide students with a list of terms and ask them to arrange the terms on paper, drawing arrows between related concepts and labeling each arrow to explain the relationship. Students can also use software like MindMeister or bubbl.us to project their maps on a screen or share with the class.
• Error identification: Provides statements, readings, proofs, or other materials that contain errors. Students must find and correct the errors.  
• Gallery Walk: Questions are posted around a room. The class is broken up into small groups of students, and each group is asked to engage with a different question for 3-5 minutes and write their answers below the question. All groups then rotate to the next posted question and add to the answers the previous group already contributed for the next 3-5 minutes. The rotations continue until all the groups have had a chance to contribute to every question, then everyone walks around the room to look at all of the collective answers and discuss them.
• Generative AI Platform: Consider ways in which an AI platform may accelerate or expand student thinking. For example, using them for brainstorming about a topic initially.
• Group Annotation of a Text:  Select a text (excerpt of a reading that includes a graph, a figure, a chart, a short passage, etc.) for students to annotate via Perusall. Make the portion of the text they annotate in real time in class a brief portion and use the feature in Perusall to assign 5-10 students to a copy of the text. Then, post the annotations in real time during class and have an interactive discussion. There is an option to have students annotate and reply to each other’s annotations.
• Letters: Have students assume the identity of an important person in a discipline and write a letter explaining their thoughts on an issue, finding, or controversy. If in lecture, this could be similar to a one-minute paper (see below). In a seminar, students could share excerpts of their letters.
• One-Minute Papers: Provide students with one question for brief reflection or review of what has been taught that day. Emphasize that responses should be concise. Each student then submits their answers via a google form or shares with someone close by after writing in their notebook. Instructor takes a moment after the one-minute paper to respond to any important questions or issues that arise–either in that class or  the following class after reviewing the google form responses. 
• Rubric Analysis: Provide students with a rubric for an upcoming assignment or exam. Share with them a prior example of student work (not an example that they will be assessed on this year but one in year’s past) and have them discuss in pairs where they think the answer (if an exam) or a writing sample (if a paper) would be scored on the rubric and why. 
• Site Visits: Organizes field trips that allow students to see and apply theories and concepts. For example, students can visit museums or libraries, engage in field research, or view special collections housed at Yale.
• Think-Pair-Share: Students individually think about a particular question, scenario, or problem. Next, have each student pair up to discuss their ideas or answers. Then bring students together as a class for discussion if a seminar and for a few students to share responses if a lecture.

• Ice breakers: Through introductory activities, students learn each other’s names and interests to build community in the classroom.
• Learning goals: Students create a list of skills and topics they would like to explore and share any questions they have about the syllabus and course design. Instructors can also share and explain their own intended learning outcomes. This activity is particularly effective during the first class or at the beginning of a class session.
• Discussion ground rules: The instructor cultivates a safe and inclusive class climate by working with students to create ground rules for discussion. 
• Self-assessment: Students receive an ungraded quiz or a checklist of ideas to assess their understanding of the subject.
• Student-generated test questions: Instructor provides students with a copy of learning goals for a particular unit. Groups of students create test questions corresponding to the learning goals.
• Peer review: Students complete an individual homework assignment or short paper. Before the assignment is due, students submit one copy to their partner or group, and then provide each other with critical feedback.

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom (ASHE–ERIC Higher Education Rep. No. 1). Washington, DC: The George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development.

Chiu, P. H. P., & Cheng, S. H. (2016). Effects of active learning classrooms on student learning: a two-year empirical investigation on student perceptions and academic performance. Higher Education Research & Development, 36(2), 269–279. https://doi-org.ezproxy.princeton.edu/10.1080/07294360.2016.1196475

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the national academy of sciences, 111(23), 8410-8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111.

Khan, A., Egbue, O., Palkie, B., & Madden, J. (2017). Active Learning: Engaging Students To Maximize Learning In An Online Course. Electronic Journal of e-Learning 15(2), 107–115.

Kozanitis, A., & Nenciovici, L. (2023), Effect of active learning versus traditional lecturing on the learning achievement of college students in humanities and social sciences: a meta-analysis. Higher Education 86, 1377–1394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00977-8.

Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., … & Freeman, S. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476-6483.

1. The Teaching Tools for Higher Education website has an Active Learning Library that allows instructors to filter for class size, preparation time, level of difficulty, type of engagement, etc.
2. The Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Queensland has an in depth description of in-class active learning activities that define the activity and explain how and why to use it, along with a video example for each type of active learning they feature. This site is a great resource for those new to active learning.
3. Harvard University’s Teaching and Learning Lab breaks down active learning strategies by individual, small group, and whole class. A helpful resource when trying to organize a class into varied configurations for student learning.