Active learning is a learning approach that involves active involvement, participation, and student engagement in the course being pursued. It is a process that helps in increasing the effectiveness of education along with gaining many learning qualities such as active listening, reading, speaking, discussing, problem-solving, and scoring.
Megan Smith, an educator, once said: “Flipping our classrooms into active learning spaces really is important and having these convenient spaces where people feel comfortable.”
Create an active online learning environment: for teachers can do?
Planning and designing proper activities
Keeping in mind the objectives of active learning, plan and create proper and effective for the students in this regard. The first thing that you have to create is a lesson plan, which should include the details and sequence of how a lesson needs to be taught to the learners. The best app to teach online provides you with many useful tools for this process.
- For this, create a sequence or an order having the series of events that you have planned. This will help you to be systematic and presentable to the learners.
- Design the planned activities. On online teaching platforms, presentations, modules, online worksheets, picture cards, and audio lessons are of great help. The best app to teach online helps teachers to include these activities in their teaching plans. After all, this, be ready for giving a perfect teaching session to your online learners.
Involve students
Involving students in your lessons is very important to develop an active online learning environment. Only teachers speaking and students listening to them is a passive form and not at all beneficial for learners to grow and learn in their education. To make sure two-way communication or interaction, encourage students to participate, speak up and share their views about the content being taught. A teacher’s tone and bonding with the students will surely promote active learning among them.
Properly evaluate
If you want your classes to have an active and proper learning environment, evaluating and examining the class performance, students’ understanding, and the quality of teaching is very important. In this regard, teachers can conduct written tests, oral exams, group discussions, or personal interactions with the students. This will help you in analyzing how actively students are responding to what is being taught and where more improvisation and betterment are required.
What students should do?
Participate
If students want to obtain the best knowledge for themselves, they have to put in some effort. In this regard, students should participate as much as possible in the activities and discussions being carried out in the classroom. When a student interacts and communicates often in class, more active learning environments are developed. There is a good exchange of views, opinions, and students tend to receive a variety of beneficial answers. Also, teachers when appreciating active performers, and students are motivated to do better and excel in their academic fields.
Focus on the feedback received
It is very important to practice this to make your learning active and better. After performing, students receive feedback from the teachers. Taking them in a constructive and healthy approach, for your benefit must be practised by the students. This will help in building a proper learning environment that will support your growth and development in academics.
For example, if you are taking a live class online, you answer a question and receive immediate feedback. Only receiving is not enough, focusing on it for improvisation of your skills and knowledge is the key to success. You can also listen attentively to the response and feedback that a teacher gives to other students as well during an online live class. These classes are the best to learn effectively. This will help you in figuring out what were your mistakes and where you need to improve.
Clear your doubts
Active learning involves students indulging better in their studies. When students study with more focus they practice depth learning. In this process doubts and queries surely occur. To make learning smooth and active, students should get clarity of their doubts. This will help to attain proper understanding and also chances of misconceptions and mistakes will be reduced to a great extent.
Review your learning and work
Reviewing is very important to become an active learner. After every online class, review and revise what you have learned. If you have some written notes made, recheck them by referring to the study material and textbooks that you have. You could also review them with online study tools with summaries, exam preps, lecture notes and other documents from top students doing the same course from several universities worldwide. Reviewing will keep you updated about how much you have learned and what more needs to be remembered.
Takeaway
The above-mentioned points and practices are very beneficial for both teachers and learners in developing effective and active online learning environments for the exchange of knowledge and information. By following these righteous strategies, students will be able to receive the best of education with the teaching and guidance of their instructors.
Dennis Relojo-Howell is the managing director of Psychreg.
