This document summarizes a workshop on active learning that discussed the importance of context in facilitating active learning pedagogies. It highlighted that both student and instructor factors, as well as the wider context, affect the ability to take advantage of active learning opportunities. The workshop aimed to engage attendees in a discussion of context, share experiences of facilitating active learning in a large undergraduate program, and highlight course-level contexts that need consideration. Examples discussed included classroom design, course-level artifacts like statements of expected student activities, and issues like staff buy-in, assessment strategies, and infrastructure support.

1. ‘Active Learning: Activity or Action?‟
HEA Workshop: Friday, 14th March
Dr J M Keane
Active Learning: The Wider
Context

2. The none student and none tutor factors
that affect their ability to take advantage of
active learning opportunities.
Wider Context

3. To engage workshop attendees in a
discussion of the importance of context in
active learning pedagogies.
To share experience of how active learning
was facilitated on a large undergraduate
degree programme at UoG.
To highlight some of the course level contexts
that need to be „managed‟ in order to promote
active learning.
Aim

4. Please write down three context factors
you feel are important in creating active
learning opportunities in the classroom.
Read the letter from Professor Nolan at
the University of California, Berkeley
Activity: 10 Minutes

5. When Jim makes a point that you feel
relates to one of your factors, please put
up your hand.
Your Role

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfT_hoiuY8w
Classroom Context

7. “Whilst lectures and tutorials will be
used, more emphasis will be placed on the in-
class and out of class activities such as
learning clinics, projects and coaching
sessions. Students will be supported to
display the skills of independent learners and
encouraged to seek out what they need from
academic staff.”
Extract from the validation report in 2008.
BA (Hons) Business Management

8. An initial survey of the first year‟s operation of the new Business
Management programmes at the University of Gloucestershire
indicated that students were: “more engaged in active learning
approaches – showing more emphasis on
synthesis, organisation and less on knowledge transmission”;
“more active participants in the learning process and involved in
discovery processes”; and “more engaged in group
activities, formally and informally, and working with authentic
situations”
Review Report in 2010 by CeAL (Centre for Active Learning)
Level 4 Review

9. •Share the teaching and learning philosophy with students – make
the pedagogy transparent at course level. See
http://ideaedu.org/sites/default/files/paperidea_53.pdf
•Recognise the importance of metacognition in various ways.
•Ensure there is an assessment strategy which underpins AL
(PBL/reflective papers /research on real world „messy‟
issues/integrative challenges at each level etc)
•Require colleagues to make explicit statements about what their
students will be doing in their classes. This is not about the
curriculum or learning outcomes. See
http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/active/strategies/index.
html
•Develop bespoke resources the course can use to develop AL
practices. See http://www.cgs.pitt.edu/sites/default/files/Doc6-
GetStarted_ActiveLearningHandbook.pdf
Course Level Artefacts

10. •Staff resistance to change/challenge
•Need for champions (20% of tutors will likely achieve 80% of the AL
outcomes at course level (Pareto Principle))
•Overall assessment portfolio needs to be actively managed (e.g.
ensure PBL/reflection/application etc)
•Integrative modules are important (e.g. simulations)
•Supportive concepts across the whole course (e.g. sustainability)
•Management buy in (and investment, for example, in staff
development)
•Rooms and infrastructure (Berkeley)
•Need for smaller seminars (through having larger lectures
perhaps?).
•Overall, the question is whether AL is a cultural characteristic
of the course, such that it is embedded in the behaviours and
Course Level Issues

11. Can anyone offer any more context
factors relevant to achieving AL in the
classroom?
Other Context Factors?

12. •Context to AL is important.
•Design of classrooms is the most obvious
context.
•Other contexts are about course level
design, practices, behaviours and attitudes.
•Courses which practice AL can be seen in
the various artefacts they produce.
•Particular issues need to be addressed by
those with course level responsibilities.
Summary