Embedding effective and inclusive active learning into teaching and curriculum design, which engages, motivates and supports all students in their learning is an important University of Bristol strategic aim. 

Active learning is fundamentally about student engagement and participation. It involves students going beyond passive listening in lectures or ‘sitting back and being fed information’ to ‘learning by doing’ and being agents of their own learning, for example through discussion, problem solving, role-play, and creating something new (Gibbs, 1988; Kolb, 2015).   
 
Active learning is also more than a series of activities within a lecture or class. A key implication of active learning approaches is that by engaging students more deeply in learning through activity in class, there is less room to cover content, which requires rethinking the curriculum design of a whole unit or programme. Key approaches to curriculum design include: flipped learning (where students engage with material ahead of class, feeing the class up for activity); problem-based learning (where students engage, often in groups, in solving broad and open-ended problems over a series of sessions); and applied projects (e.g. dissertation and research projects, community and employer projects). 

Current activities

BILT’s involvement with this theme includes:

• Funding of 7 Education Development Projects
• Engagement of a BILT Student Fellow (Elliot Green) in the theme area 
• Show, Tell and Talk workshops

Resources and guidance

• Our case studies on problem based learning, authentic learning and research-rich teaching contain great examples of active learning ideas in use in Bristol.