3 Ways to Make an Active Learner Out of a Passive Observer

3 Ways to Make an Active Learner Out of a Passive Observer

According to Late Dr. Mel Silberman, “Lectures put participants in a position of sustained, passive listening. Learning, unfortunately is not an automatic consequence of pouring information into another person’s head. It requires the person’s own mental processing. Therefore, lecturing by itself will never lead to real learning.”

The road to creating an ideal classroom for a teacher is tougher than it sounds, especially in a class full of disinterested and non-participating students. Here are 3 ways on how to push your students from being mere observers, to being active contributors to the class.

1. Class Discussion

While it may seem to be a far-fetched idea, but class discussion is one of the simplest and easiest ways to get there. By doing class activities students are more engaged and improving learning in the process. Students will remain more active and contribute more to such discussions, when they know they are being graded. With nClass, you can engage passive listeners during a class presentation, and even add an anonymous conversation thread to encourage the quite ones to getting involved in these discussions.

2. Learning by teaching

Divide the class into small groups of students and assign a topic to each group. The group will conduct research and present to the class. Visual presentation, instead of long written assignments, improves learning for the whole class. A student presentation followed by a moderated discussion and Q&A can be done using nClass. Other advantages are learning planning and teamwork skills, more motivated to impress their peers and building self confidence.  

3. Collaborative Learning

For the ideal classroom to exist, it is important that students mingle among themselves and help each other out, to keep the flow of knowledge open and transparent. Shuffling among students helps to engage students better with each other and see a particular topic from different perspectives as well.

An integral part of the college experience is the in-person interaction amongst the students. It is important that students interact among themselves, sharing knowledge and hearing diverse opinions. Group Assignments, Peer Instruction are just some ways to encourage student collaboration. By making the students both dependable and accountable to their peers in the learning process, also prepares them for real-world situations.

How are you creating active learners? Let us know in the comments.