Active Learning

Keeping students engaged in the learning process is difficult—whether the classroom setting is a seminar of a dozen students or a large lecture class of several hundred. The resources below provide a number and variety of concrete suggestions to help you keep students involved and participating.

• Active Learning for the College Classroom
  Outstanding article with many specific ideas written by Donald R. Paulson (Chemistry and Biochemistry) & Jennifer L. Faust (Philosophy) from UCLA.
  
  
• Course Planning and Teaching-Alternative Strategies and Active Learning
  Written and published online by the staff of the Center for Teaching and Learning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, these resources provide an overview of active learning along with suggested activities:
  • Classroom Activities for Active Learning (Nov. 2009) ( PDF File)
  • Active Learning Beyond the Classroom (Jan. 1989) ( PDF File)
    
    
• Active Learning
  A number of different active learning strategies from Kathleen McKinney, Cross Chair in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University.
  
  
• Active Learning: Getting Students to Work and Think in the Classroom
  This resource includes suggestions for activities based on level of activity and risk. From the Stanford University Newsletter on Teaching, 1993, Vol 5, No. 1. (Downloads as a PDF file.)