Active Learning
The eight active learning methods — the session-architecture choices that produce behavior change instead of passive listening.
Which Active Learning Method Fits Your Workshop?
This series has covered seven active-learning methods — seven different ways to structure a workshop so participants do the cognitive work that produces real learning. Each method was developed to solve a specific kind of learning problem.
Simulation-Based Learning
Simulation-Based Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants enact a specific scenario — playing roles, working through a constructed situation, and practicing the interaction in a safe context.
Action Learning
Action Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants work on their own real, unresolved problems over time, take action between sessions, and return to the group to reflect on what happened. The problem is not simulated.
Collaborative Learning
Collaborative Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants work together on a shared task to produce learning none of them could reach alone.
Case-Based Learning
Case-Based Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants analyze a specific, resolved scenario — the case — to draw out transferable principles they can apply to similar situations later.
Inquiry-Based Learning
Inquiry-Based Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants investigate an open question — gathering evidence, forming and testing hypotheses, and developing understanding through the process of inquiry rather than through direct…
Project-Based Learning
Project-Based Learning is a workshop design approach in which participants produce a tangible artifact — a plan, a strategy, a prototype, a document — over the course of the workshop, and the artifact becomes both the vehicle and the evidence of the…
Problem-Based Learning
Problem-Based Learning is a workshop design approach in which the session is built around a complex, open-ended problem that participants work through to solve. The problem is introduced first, before any relevant content is delivered.
The Guiding Principles of Active Learning
A workshop can deploy every visible marker of active learning — breakouts, think-pair-share, live polls, roleplay — and still produce the passive-learning outcomes the approach is supposed to eliminate.
What Active Learning Is (and What It Isn't)
A workshop where participants spend most of the session listening produces weaker learning outcomes than a workshop where they spend most of the session working with the material.
Active Learning
You are building workshops where real behavior change is supposed to happen — cohorts, group programs, intensives, coaching sessions, the sessions your participants pay to be in.