During March and April our LEC Education Fellows have been working on a series of in-school workshops designed to unpack a particular aspect of LEC.  We’ve brought these together into a “LEC 101” series and were pleased to offer these to schools via their DoEs who attended the LEC Focussed joint FEC on 30 April.  

This is an comprehensive 511 page resource edited by Sarah Wilson-Medhurst and Janet Horrocks drawing on contributions from the Active Learning Network and its members. As a bonus, the book is helpfully published under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA)

The book Making Active Learning Happen for All is laid out in 7 sections

1. So Why is Embedding and Sustaining Active learning a Problem, and What Can We Do About it?
2. Approaches to Embedding and Sustaining Active Learning Across the Institution
3. Shifting Staff Mindsets
4. Promoting Staff Self-Regulation and Adaptation
5. Shifting Student Mindsets
6. Promoting Student Self-Regulation and Adaptation
7. Designing and Implementing Sustainable and Inclusive Active Learning Experiences

After the first introductory section, the remaining sections comprise short articles, opinion pieces and case studies from a range of perspectives. It’s really easy to navigate and a rich resource that is worth dipping into.

Section 2, Embedding Active Learning Across the Institution starts with systems level perspective on the challenges of implementing Active Learning – grouping challenges into those relating to mindset; purpose and goals; structure; and elements and resource. From here the chapter then explores how a number of institutions have supported the adoption of active learning. We read of the satellite Active Learning Network in Anglia Ruskin University providing a space where staff can share ideas, reflect on experience and build collective expertise.  Manchester Metropolitan University has an Innovation Scholar Scheme where educators are fractionally seconded to MMUs Centre for Learning Enhancement and Educational Development Unit. The Case Study from Herriot Watt had lots of practical tips – how they have encouraged the use of active learning in their curriculum framework through consistent messaging, use of examples, tips on low preparation activities, through training sessions and a storyboard toolkit.

Section 5 unpicks some of the essential underpinnings for Active Learning,  I particularly appreciated the examples offered by Sophia Zevgoli in “Active Learning and Culture in Sync: Making it work for an Inclusive Classroom” – her chapter focusses on normalising mistakes and removing cultural barriers. Section 6 speaks to the development of capabilities and attributes that enable students to “navigate the active learning terrain” – the need for deliberate scaffolding, the role of critical team coaching and mature perspectives on the role of GenAI.

Section 7 features a number of detailed active learning case studies. Some of my favourites are below:

• Gamified Peer Review: Making Feedback Fun – students rate quality of feedback received from their peers awarding gold silver or bronze to the reviewers and a dynamic reviewer leaderboard.
• Applying Educational Games to Teaching and Learning of Sustainable Development: A Multinational Case Study – using a board game to enable students to explore the Sustainable Development Goals
• Active Learning as a Tool for Student-Led Seminars – students present on film sequences and their peers capture key points
• Partnering with Students to Create Educational Science Games: Insights from Higher Education in South Asia – how designing games created a space for postgraduate science education students to develop a deeper understanding of pedagogy.
• Active Learning as Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Learning: Building Student Capacity for the Complex Challenges of the 21st Century – supporting second year students to address challenges in interdisciplinary groups
• Using Problem-Based Collaborative Active Learning as a Scaffold for Developing Professional Competencies – Group based PBL Consultancy Capstone for Masters students.
• Making Multidisciplinarity Work: An Active Learning Approach – Play-Doh modelling used on a PGCert Research Masters to communicate disciplinary attributes, knowledge creation and connections in a multidisciplinary environment.
• Transition to Active Learning: Introducing Widening Participation Students to Active Learning – interspersing micro lectures and activities in a Summer School programme.

Active Learning at Newcastle University

This is a timely publication, given that our Leading Edge Curriculum places active learning as our core pedagogical principle. The case study ideas above can act as useful inspiration, but it is worth noting that we also have fabulous home-grown examples of active learning see: Active Learning – Case Studies of Teaching Practice. These are linked from our Active Learning page on the Teaching and Learning Site.

The “Embedding Active Learning ”case studies in Section 2 come from diverse institutional settings each with differing starting points, structures and approaches to redesign. As we transform programmes, the Curriculum Transformation Team will be supporting programme teams to design active learning into modules. Alongside this our LEC Fellow led Communities of Practice will be celebrating and sharing practice as well as developing resources and development.

Get involved

If you would like to champion active pedagogies or contribute to resources you can come to The Communities of Practice Launch event, co-hosted with Newcastle Educators. It’s on Thursday 7 May, to sign up and find out more see the post in the Newcastle Educators Team.

We would also love to hear about your own use of Active Learning. You can contribute an Active Learning Case Study via our form on Case Studies of Teaching Practice or by getting in touch with us ltds@newcastle.ac.uk