It is common to say things in a way the remind us of Yogi Berra's quotes. For example: " Nothing difficult was ever easy" is claimed to be one of his quotes.
"Active Learning" is one of those as by definition learning is an activity. There is no opposite or any other way, can you imagine passive learning. The idea of course is to make a difference between learning through listening to a lecturer, where the learner appears to be passive, not moving, not asking questions, not even taking notes. Just thinking. Thinking then becomes a passive state as if the thinker is doing nothing.
Let's think about this for a moment.
As I am typing this essay and thinking about "Active Learning" I am being creative, or al least trying to be, and imagining a situation in the classroom where I teach. I share with my students some background of the topic, some historical introduction if needed, some connections to other subjects in the course, the topic itself, and asking them to think. One way to ask them to think, is me asking questions. Questions like: Do you have any questions? Can you please ask me a question? If the topic or idea involves some mathematical solutions then I can ask a question related to the solution of a problem, based on the equations developed during the lecture.
This format is what is normally not defined as "Active Learning". So what we can do is to turn things around and start by asking a question, by setting some framework to the question, and then ask the students -by themselves or in groups- to develop the answer and theories behind the answer. Such an approach is named POGIL in chemical education. It stands for Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning. For more information about POGIL click here.
With different names similar approaches have been developed with great success, one worth mentioning is David Sokoloff at the University of Oregon who has worked for many years in physics education. The main idea in STEM is the hands on experience. The need to do real experiments, beyond the typical demonstration, where students gather data and learn how to interpret it to the degree where laws can be created to explain the results observed in the experiment. For more information about Active Learning in Physics click here.
Now we face a new challenge with online teaching, how can we make STEM education active online when the instruments to perform experiments are not widely available? What kind of video resources can be produced to replace the hands on experience? This is a challenge that we all are facing, and many great educators are busy working and developing new materials, many of which will prove to be invaluable resources. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a tragic event but we can get something good from it, specially in education. Now hybrid platforms are being created that will help a wide variety of students. Students with different needs that before were boxed in to a single, uniform, educational setting. Now students and teachers will have options in their communication. Asking all the time, are we being active learners?
