Active learning lessons can be designed with three steps. These steps are intended to reveal gaps in students’ knowledge on the topic, provide missing information, and give students an opportunity to apply the new information to a similar problem. Incorporating active learning lessons into the curriculum has been found to increase retention, particularly among marginalized students1.
The first step is exploration. Students are given a problem or situation and asked to explore it. Ideally, this leads to them discovering many of the concepts that will be introduced in the next step. It’s perfectly fine if the task is a little beyond the capabilities of the students. The point of the exploration phase in the active learning cycle is to identify a gap in the students’ knowledge needed to complete the task. However, it shouldn’t feel so overwhelming as to make them less interested. Difficult aspects of the task could be scaffolded to give students more focus on the intended learning objective2. In preparation for the next step, students are asked to share out the key points of what they discussed.
The second step is explanation. Once student’s have identified the limits of their knowledge, it’s time to expand on it. The instructor is also expected to anticipate the gaps that students will have, though this can never be fully accurate as each student brings their own unique background to the classroom3. This step will usually involve a mini-lecture to cover the gaps that were revealed at the conclusion of the exploration step, and give students opportunities to ask additional questions that were not anticipated in the lecture.
The last step is application. Students apply the knowledge gained in the explanation step to handle a similar (or slightly more difficult) problem as what was given in the exploration step. The problem should require the same skills, though not be too similar to the original problem/situation as to cause students to feel bored. This could be an opportunity to showcase the variety of applications of the target knowledge.
An example in an English language classroom could be a lesson designed to teach how to identify and write a topic sentence in a paragraph. In the first step, students are given a pair of paragraphs that are identical expect one has a topic sentence and one does not. Students should discuss and decide which topic has an easier to understand main idea. The discussion should focus on why, and students could be provided with a set of discussion questions to guide them along. In the transition to step two, students are asked to share what they talked about and any insights or prior knowledge that was revealed. In the second step, the instructor picks up the various relevant points that students had shared as she gives a brief lecture on what a topic sentence is and why we use it. She gives students time to ask follow-up questions to clarify important points and may confirm understanding with a short exercise. Finally, students are given a slightly more difficult task of being given a set of topic sentences and a set of paragraphs without topic sentences and asked to match them. The difficulty of this could be increased by adding one or more foil paragraphs that do have a topic sentence.