School of Mathematics & Statistics

Evidence-based Active Learning

Active learning puts students at the heart of the learning experience and is being increasingly utilised as a learning strategy throughout higher education. There is a significant body of evidence that points to the positive impact of active learning approaches on student engagement, retention and attainment. The success of active learning generally centres on students taking responsibility for their own learning, often through engagement with materials and activities prior to in-person classes. This can present challenges as students may lack the discipline, motivation or time to consistently prepare for class. It is therefore crucial as we move towards a more student-centred active learning approach we are able to critically evaluate the success (or failure) of these new approaches.

This multi-institutional project brings together colleagues interested in the implementation and evaluation of active learning approaches in Statistics (and more generally) who aim to promote, encourage and enable more pervasive engagement with evidence-based active learning approaches. In particular, the focus is on how to evaluate full student populations (rather than relying, for example, on feedback from a selection of students who complete course evaluation surveys) through the use of learning analytics to examine data about students and their activities in the support of student learning.