Elizabeth F. Barkley - Student Engagement Techniques

Learning is acquiring information or “knowing a lot.”

Learning is memorizing or “storing” information.

Learning is acquiring facts and skills that can be used.

Learning is making sense or “making meaning” of the various parts of information.

Learning involves comprehending or understanding the world by reinterpreting knowledge. (cited in Ramsden, 1992, pp. 26–27)

This final level echoes the definitions of active learning. Deep or active learning approaches, then, are evident when students seek deeper understanding rather than surface information , the latter of which rests lightly on the surface, inert and unassimilated. Some students come equipped with deep learning approaches, but instructors can also help students develop or improve such approaches.

Active learning strategies or techniques, sometimes confusingly referred to as simply active learning, refers to several specific models of instruction, which range from more to less structured, including discussion, worksheets, cooperative and collaborative learning, discovery learning, experiential learning, problem-based learning, and inquiry-based learning. It is easy to conflate active learning with group work, thinking, for example, that simply breaking a class into small groups so that more students have a chance to participate will result in student engagement. This belief is reinforced by NSSE and CCSSE survey questions that ask students to report the frequency with which they've participated in group activities, with the assumption that the larger the number, the more “engaged” that institutions' students are presumed to be. Bowen (2005) points out that NSSE, “which assesses the extent to which these pedagogies are used, has become one de facto operational definition of engagement” (p. 4).

We suggest that active learning techniques prompt students to engage in different learning tasks. By learning task, we mean the responsibility that an instructor expects students to do to help them meet important learning outcomes. By active learning technique, we mean the specific activity that the teacher intentionally designed to prompt students to complete the task. In Table 3.1, we offer examples of the tasks that can require active learning and techniques that can prompt them.

TABLE 3.1.Active Learning Tasks and Techniques

Just engaging students in a given task is not sufficient. It is not safe, for example, to conclude that if students are talking to each other they are learning. It is equally risky to conclude that students are learning when they are listening to other students talking. Something beyond the task has to happen for active learning to occur.

We propose that when identifying a technique to promote active learning in a college course, teachers should consider not only the learning task but also a goal for the level of activity involved. By level of activity, we mean students' mental investment and the strategies they use to reflect on and monitor the processes and the results of their learning (Barkley & Major, 2018). Level of activity is a discrete component because one type of learning task does not necessarily demand more mental investment than another; rather, each type of learning task can require more or less mental activity depending on the individual learner as well as the content and design of the specific task. For example, although some educators argue that students who are listening to a lecture are necessarily learning more passively than those who are solving problems, consider the following problem: X + 3 = 5. Most college students can solve this problem without too much mental activity. However, college students who are listening carefully to a lecture can have high levels of mental activity, including focused attention, curiosity, empathy, critical thinking, and so forth. Thus, students can have low to high levels of mental activity in any given learning task and any given learning task can require and result in more or less active learning from students. We offer our own conception of the active learning continuum for several key learning tasks in Table 3.2(from Barkley & Major, 2018, pp. 22–23).

The challenge for faculty who wish to employ active learning techniques to promote deeper, more active learning is to find techniques that can help students move from level 1 (low) to level 3 (high) on the continuum in terms of their mental activity, whatever the learning task happens to be. Active learning techniques are a vehicle to help students not only take on the task but also engage in the higher levels of active learning.

TABLE 3.2.The Active Learning Continuum for Several Key Learning Tasks

Learning is a dynamic process in which learners literally “build” their own minds by constantly making and changing connections between what is new and what is already known. Deep, long-term learning occurs when changed connections result in reformatted structures—whether these structures are described as schemata or neuronal networks. As much as we (and often students!) would like to think that we as teachers can simply transfer knowledge into learners' brains, it is simply not possible. Students need to do the work required to learn. We can help them by setting up conditions for active learning. By being active participants in their own learning, students “build” their own minds at the level of involvement required for engaged learning.