Enhanced Memory through Active Learning

Despite widespread consensus among educators that active learning leads to better outcomes than comparatively passive forms of instruction, it is often unclear why these benefits arise. In this article we review research showing that the opportunity to control the information experienced while learning leads to improved memory relative to situations where control is absent. By integrating findings from a wide range of experimental paradigms, we identify a set of distinct mechanisms that mediate these effects, including the formation of distinctive sensorimotor associations, elaborative encoding due to goal-directed exploration, improved coordination of selective attention and encoding, adaptive selection of material based on existing memory, and metacognitive monitoring. Examining these mechanisms provides new insights into the effects of active learning, including how different forms of active control lead to improved outcomes relative to more traditional, passive instruction. ENHANCED MEMORY THROUGH ACTIVE LEARNING 3 Enhanced memory as a common effect of active learning One of the most widespread ideas in education is the virtue of being an active learner. Over more than half a century, a succession of educational theories have each advanced a new image of what it means to be active during learning and the purported benefits relative to passive instructional conditions.regulated learning (Boekaerts, 1997)—vary in their breadth and emphasis, but share the view that active learning leads to improved outcomes, a claim that is often supported in comparisons with more traditional forms of passive, lecture-based teaching (Bonwell & Eison, 1991; Freeman et al., 2014). Despite the prominence of this idea, it is often unclear why active learning succeeds or fails in real-world settings, as active instruction typically varies in multiple ways from passive learning. Indeed, the concept of active learning has grown to encompass a huge variety of instructional techniques, usually referring to some combination of increased physical activity or interaction, deeper processing, elaboration or explanation of material, planning of learning activities, question-asking, metacognitive monitoring, and social collaboration. As a result of this diversity, it is difficult to identify the causal factors that lead to performance differences under active learning, or to predict whether such effects will generalize to other kinds of activities or materials. This difficulty is underscored by ongoing debates over the merits of active and attempts to create precise taxonomies of active behaviors and their predicted effects on learning (Chi, 2009). One approach for understanding the effects of active instruction is to identify how it engages underlying …