Active Learning in Higher Education: A Model and Roadmap

Abstract

In this chapter, we present lessons learned from 10 years’ instructional experience with active learning through our classes at Syracuse University. As reflective practitioners of active learning, we have refined our instruction over the years, in the process conceptually extending and augmenting extant theories of experiential learning and related approaches. Our model is built around four principles: client-centered work in natural settings, task design that is attentive to the motivational properties of the active learning stimulus, learning as social participation, and community service learning. Learning through prototyping, with its emphasis on design and the making of artifacts, functions as a background to the extended model and informs each of its principles. We then present a brief history of the Center for Active Learning and the Community and Information Technology Institute, both of which, in slightly different ways, implement our active learning method.