Active learning is more important – and easier to create – than ever

If you teach, you've almost certainly heard that "active learning" is more effective than so-called passive methods. But what exactly counts as active learning, and how hard is it actually to implement? The answers might be more encouraging than you'd expect.

Active learning works

Active learning is any approach where students work with, retrieve, or apply information in order to build understanding or move toward mastery. As Bonwell & Eison (1991) put it, many faculty assert that all learning is inherently active — but the research literature suggests students need to do more than just listen.

The key distinction between active learning and passive exposure is that durable memory is built through mental effort. Reading, listening, and watching are necessary inputs for taking in new information. But without additional engagement with that information, learning rarely sticks.

Research on active learning spans a wide range of techniques across disciplines and settings, and the pattern is consistent: active methods outperform passive ones. A few well-known examples:

• The testing effect (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006) shows that simple self-testing beats re-reading.

• Question-embedded videos are more effective than videos alone (Torres et al., 2022).

• Breaking up lecture with peer-to-peer learning activities deepens engagement.

• Students working with partial or incomplete outlines outperform those reviewing complete notes (Katayama & Robinson, 2000).

These are just a handful of techniques that produce more durable learning than passive consumption or traditional study methods. It's no surprise, then, that active learning meaningfully improves course pass rates. A landmark meta-analysis found that courses employing active learning saw more than a third fewer failures compared to lecture-only sections (Freeman et al., 2014).

The case for leaning into active learning has rarely been stronger. As institutions serve a broader range of students with uneven or more distant academic backgrounds, active learning helps every student build core understanding faster. Add the pressure to demonstrate real educational value — durable learning that prepares students for what comes next, even as generative AI reshapes traditional approaches — and active learning becomes essential, not optional.

Active learning requires change

So why isn't every instructor leaning on these techniques? A few honest reasons:

• Most faculty are trained academics, not instructional designers. The vocabulary and patterns of active learning aren't always part of how a course was originally built.

• Improving instruction takes time. Posting lecture outlines or slides to the LMS is simply faster than designing a learning activity built around those same materials.

• Students don't always love it at first — likely because active learning is both less familiar and more cognitively demanding. About a third of instructors who try active learning revert to lecture, partly in response to student pushback (Deslauriers et al., 2019).

None of this reflects on faculty effort or care. It reflects the very real constraints of how higher ed courses get built and delivered.

AI can streamline the development of active learning

For many instructors, layering active learning onto an existing course has felt like a heavy lift — evaluating current instruction, identifying where to add active elements, then actually building and delivering those activities on top of everything else.

This is exactly where AI changes the math. Instructors who already have a course built can use AI to evaluate their existing materials, ideate on more active approaches, and produce new activities grounded in research-backed practice. SchoolAI was designed specifically with active learning in mind, so it's easy to:

• Reframe existing course materials. Upload what you already have and surface ways to activate those lessons — spaced or paced appropriately for your students.

• Convert passive content into active practice. Instantly turn a lecture outline or set of notes into a fill-in-the-blank activity, a retrieval practice exercise, or a quick formative assessment.

• Run live, interactive Spaces in class. Test understanding and activate prior knowledge in real time — and walk away with immediate insight into where today's session needs to focus.

• Facilitate rich activities beyond the LMS. Think interactive roleplays, Socratic deep-dives, or self-tests with live feedback that adapts to each student.

Instructors using SchoolAI also have access to a growing library of free, reusable, AI-powered learning activities. These pre-built Spaces are fully remixable, so customizing them to your discipline, your topic, or your specific learning outcomes takes minutes, not hours.

And because SchoolAI integrates directly with the LMS, making your course more active doesn't mean adding a new tool on the side — it slots into the workflows you and your students already use.

References & Further Reading

Bonwell, C. C., & Eison, J. A. (1991). Active learning: Creating excitement in the classroom. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report No. 1. George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED336049.pdf

Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L. S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., & Kestin, G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(39), 19251–19257. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

Katayama, A. D., & Robinson, D. H. (2000). Getting students "partially" involved in note-taking using graphic organizers. The Journal of Experimental Education, 68(2), 119–133. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220970009598498

Roediger, H. L., III, & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x

Torres, D., Pulukuri, S., & Abrams, B. (2022). Embedded questions and targeted feedback transform passive educational videos into effective active learning tools. Journal of Chemical Education, 99(7), 2738–2742. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jchemed.2c00342