When I say … active learning

Abstract

Medical educators strive to offer their learners educational experiences that engage them effectively and efficiently. Educators commonly use the term ‘active learning’ to describe those experiences. One of the most cited articles on active learning in medical education defines it as ‘anything that involves students in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing’ by ensuring engagement, observation and reflection.¹ Debates about the best definition aside, we have noticed that the term has variably been used in the literature to describe a property of instruction (e.g. problem-based learning) or a process in which learners engage (e.g. selecting, organising and integrating presented information). Though this difference may appear subtle, we believe it has implications for how medical educators design effective instruction. In this When I Say … article, we offer some suggestions regarding how medical educators and researchers might use the term moving forward.

Designs that promote active learning (e.g. breakout groups) can certainly be built into instruction, but their presence does not guarantee that the desired learning processes will take place. Learners vary in their response to instructional stimuli, even those with well-designed supports for ‘active learning’. Some learners may engage in the motivational, behavioural, cognitive and/or social processes prompted by instruction while others may be unaffected, or affected in unexpected ways.

When researchers and educators define active learning as a property of instruction, they may conclude that active learning has been achieved when their instructional design appears to be successfully implemented. We worry that this instruction-centred conceptualization of active learning conceals the gap between the instruction that learners receive (which may prompt active learning strategies) and the motivational, behavioural, cognitive and/or social processes they actually engage in. Not all learners will traverse this gap.² An instruction-centred focus may render the specific needs of these learners invisible and, as a consequence, their achievement may suffer.

Conversely, when researchers and educators define active learning as learner-centred, they do not assume that it has been achieved through their instructional designs. Accordingly, researchers and educators may be more likely to consider the heterogeneous responses that learners have to the same instructional designs, and how to help learners who do not engage with supports as intended. This learner-centred perspective views active learning as a dynamic process within a given instructional situation, not as a fixed characteristic of instruction. For example, it may be that learners completing an e-learning module vary in their response to a prompt to connect their short-term goal-setting to their longer-term aspirations.³ It could be that learners who do not respond to the prompt are less motivated to engage deeply with the module. The educator who defines active learning as a dynamic process, preferably using a learning theory and associated concepts, may think of this possibility, and consider ways to further support all learners' motivation.⁴

To summarise, we suggest that defining active learning as a process in which learners engage keeps the focus on learners rather than on instruction, and acknowledges the heterogeneity of responses that learners may have to the same instructional design.

If ‘active learning’ means anything other than ‘passive’, does it really have much meaning at all? For example, a learner could be considered quite cognitively active while rehearsing a definition over and over again to commit it to memory. Similarly, a learner could be considered quite behaviorally active while writing that definition in their notebook over and over again. Finally, a learner could be considered quite motivationally active while feeling compelled to complete learning to comply with external demands or introjected pressures. Though educational experiences vary in their pedagogical intent, educators are unlikely to have such cognitive, behavioural and motivational processes in mind when trying to promote ‘active learning’.

When researchers and educators use the term active learning to describe a process in which learners engage, we encourage them to be more specific regarding which motivational, behavioural and/or cognitive processes align with their pedagogical intent. Researchers and educators can draw on several learning theories to identify and specify the processes that they aim to stimulate via intervention. Theories and their associated evidence base offer a set of metrics or observations that can be collected to ascertain whether learners are activated in the intended manner. As a curated list of theories our author team prefers to draw on when seeking to activate learners, we offer self-regulated learning,² control theory,^{3, 4} self-determination theory^{3, 4} and the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.⁵ Each of these theories has afforded us much benefit in selecting, defining, manipulating, and operationalising specific learning processes we aim to activate in learners as they experience various instructional designs. For example, in our motivational designs, we aim to support specific processes (e.g. perceptions of personal meaning, choice, confidence and interest) to encourage an autonomous motivational orientation toward learning, rather than seeking to motivate learners by any means necessary.^{3, 4}

Ensuring learners are active and not passive represents an excellent intention for educators, yet it is an imprecise binary. We recommend that medical educators and researchers continue adopting an intention to activate learners, while also seeking to explicitly outline what they aim to activate within learners' motivational, behavioural, cognitive and/or social processes. In essence, we suggest that active learning can be assumed and no longer explicitly mentioned, while the specific processes medical educators hope to activate can become the targets of the community's explicit language and inquiry.

Adam G. Gavarkovs: Conceptualization; writing—original draft. Emer Finan: Conceptualization; writing—review and editing. Rune Dall Jensen: Conceptualization; writing—review and editing. Ryan Brydges: Conceptualization; writing—review and editing.

None declared.