How does Active Learning Classrooms Benefit the Students?
You may have undergone the feeling of sitting through the lectures where the lecturer would be reading a pre-prepared script having little or no scope at all for interaction with the lecturer. These would be best described as ‘delivery mode lectures’. You should rest assured that these kinds of lectures would be draining the lecturer along with doing nothing fruitful for the students.
Does passively listening to a lecture holds good for long term?
It would be pertinent to mention here that students listening to a lecture passively would have a limited concentration from ten to twenty minutes. It would be limited to a small fraction of the lecture delivered to them. When the students listen to a lecture passively, it would be helpful to promote learning at the lower end. They would be able to remember and understand to a small extent.
However, it would not do you any good for promoting a higher level of skills. The student would not be able to analyze, apply and evaluate effectively. Despite such learning has been deemed of importance, the higher level critical thinking skills have been deemed imperative for students in the long run. They would be in need for active learning classrooms for higher level learning and skill development needs.
How to make lectures more engaging and interactive?
In case, you were wondering how to make the lectures more engaging and interactive, you should consider active learning classrooms. It would make the lectures promoting a higher level of learning for the students.
The Active learning classroom approach has been known to form a major option for learning while engaging with the provided content. It implies that students would be interacting with the provided material in a manner to promote an active process. It could be done through the following methods:
- Activities for learning
- Re-framing the process of note taking
- Encouraging the thoughts about material instead of content transcribing
Benefits of Promoting Active Learning
Promotion of active learning classrooms has several benefits to offer to students.
- The limited drop-off in concentration
- Recalling an enhanced understanding of the material
- Equity benefits resulting from active learning
- Different modes of delivering lectures support different learning styles of students
- Low performing students to improve their grades
- Ethical and pedagogical benefits to students
The active learning classrooms have been known to assist in maintaining the concentration of students. It would also help in deepening of learning towards critical thinking.
