In recent years, the use of information technology to promote active learning in higher education has raised great interest. Teachers are continuously challenged to identify new research-informed approaches and educational practices for supporting students to actively learn and apply their knowledge. The present study tests the effects on…

One-minute papers allow students to process what they learned during class and improve student performance. However, this activity can become monotonous and takes significantly longer than the name implies. The research described here tests the effectiveness of a briefer, more flexible version of this technique to increase the perceived relevance…

Providing an active learning environment and engaging students in classroom discussion could be quite challenging. This study used a quasi-experimental method to manipulate students' incentives for participation in group discussion to investigate its impact on students' learning outcomes. Two research methods courses taught over four years by the…

The COVID-19 pandemic caused nearly ubiquitous emergency remote teaching in both secondary and post-secondary education. While there has been a plethora of work examining how instructors adjusted classes to incorporate active learning during emergency remote teaching, there has only been minimal work examining how such emergency remote teaching…

Previous research has emphasized both the importance of giving and receiving peer feedback for the purpose of active learning, as well as of university students' engagement in reflection to improve learning outcomes. However, requiring students to explicitly reflect on peer reviewing is an understudied learning activity in higher education that…

Cognitive engagement is an essential component in student learning. With the increase of more asynchronous virtual educational tools in classrooms, there is a need to understand how students are engaging with classroom content in these formats. Several studies have examined student and teacher perceptions of cognitive engagement in virtual…

This design-based research (DBR) study had both local and general goals. Its local goal was to increase active learning in the online courses offered at a large research university in the midwestern United States. Its larger goal was to define active learning design principles for online courses in general, so that they might be used to improve…

The purpose of this study was to develop a valid, reliable, and brief measure of active learning in college classrooms that is cheap and easy to complete and yields results that faculty can easily use to inform their development as instructors. Initial construct and face validity was achieved by modifying existing instruments and creating a draft…

This paper responds to calls from teacher-student feedback research looking for options on how to improve student performance. In Study 1, we first observe the relationship between student conscientiousness, midterm-performance, feedback-seeking behaviors, and final semester grades. Second, in Study 2, we test whether using an active learning…

Constructive alignment is often promoted as a principle to enhance the quality of learning but the student perspective has often been neglected when exploring its influence on student learning. There is therefore a need to further explore how students' experiences of the different elements of constructive alignment influence the approach to…

Colleges and universities have implemented a broad range of initiatives to support student success. Problem solving courses and course supplements are one approach. Evaluation of these courses has shown positive outcomes in terms of improved academic performance and other benefits. A number of these studies have also reported the largest positive…

Active learning methodologies, such as flipped classroom (FC), generate a higher level of student engagement, greater dynamism in learning and more significant interactions with course content. Some other active methodologies used in the academic environment are problem-based learning (PBL) and case study (CS). There are few studies that analyse…

Open educational resources (OER), which are teaching, learning, and research materials that are openly licensed, are growing in popularity in higher education. Previous studies have focused on faculty and student perceptions and use of OER. In this study, we examined how actively engaging students as curators and designers of OERs through…

Several academic departments have increased their use of active learning to address low student success rates. However, it is unclear whether those implementing active learning have a consistent conceptualization of it. Like other educational terms, the phrase "active learning" is in danger of becoming overused and misunderstood, which…

Institutions of higher education are seeking to support more active learning among faculty, and that support includes the creation of active learning spaces to support more student-centered course activities. However, incremental development of these learning spaces leads to a sorting of students between active and passive learning environments.…