Active learning strategies: 11 methods and how to run them

What are active learning strategies?

Charles Bonwell and James Eison's 1991 report defined active learning as anything that involves students "in doing things and thinking about the things they are doing" (ERIC). A strategy is a repeatable structure for that, such as the vote, discuss, and vote-again cycle of peer instruction. An example is one use of a strategy in one lesson. For 30 concrete examples sorted by classroom, online, and workplace settings, see our companion post, examples of active learning.

Strategies differ in how much thinking they ask for. The ICAP framework from Michelene Chi and Ruth Wylie (Educational Psychologist, 2014) ranks learner activity in four modes, from passive (listening) to active (highlighting, copying notes word for word) to constructive (explaining in your own words, drawing a concept map) to interactive (debating or questioning a partner). It predicts more learning at each step up. You can use it to upgrade any activity: "highlight the key terms" becomes "explain each key term to your partner without looking."

What the research says about active learning

The evidence is strongest for undergraduate science, engineering, and math courses, where most of the large studies took place:

• Freeman and colleagues pooled 225 studies in 2014. Scores on exams and concept inventories rose by 0.47 standard deviations under active learning, and the odds of failing were 1.95 times higher under traditional lecturing. Active learning worked in classes of every size, with the largest effects in classes of 50 students or fewer (PNAS, 2014).
• Theobald and colleagues found in 2020 that active learning reduced the gap in exam scores between underrepresented students and their classmates by 33%, and the gap in passing rates by 45%. Only classes with high-intensity active learning, where students spent a large share of class time on activities, narrowed the gaps (PNAS, 2020).
• Deslauriers and colleagues randomly assigned students in large introductory physics courses at Harvard to active or lecture classes with the same content. Students in the active classes learned more but felt they had learned less. The authors suggest students read the extra mental effort as a sign of poor learning (PNAS, 2019).
• Roediger and Karpicke found that students who took recall tests on a passage remembered more of it two days and one week later than students who restudied it (Psychological Science, 2006).

Open questions and challenges in active learning research

Researchers still disagree on some basics, and recent studies add new questions:

• A 2021 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest concluded that "active learning" is an umbrella term that means different things to different groups, which makes it hard to study (Lombardi et al., 2021). Name the specific strategy when you plan, report, or evaluate it.
• The Theobald result suggests that a few minutes of activity per class may not be enough to narrow achievement gaps. How much class time it takes is still an open question.
• Many instructors still lecture most of the time. Observers coded 2,008 STEM classes taught by 548 faculty members at 25 North American institutions, and 55% of the observations fell into a "didactic" style dominated by lecture (Stains et al., Science, 2018).
• AI tutors raise a new question about what class time is for. In a 2025 randomized trial with 194 students in Harvard's largest introductory physics course, students who learned from an AI tutor built on the same teaching practices as the class achieved median learning gains more than double those of students in an in-class active learning lesson, in less time. The authors argue the tutor should prepare students for class time and not replace it (Kestin et al., Scientific Reports, 2025).
• Because most large studies come from undergraduate STEM courses, results in K-12, the humanities, and workplace training need their own testing.

How to choose an active learning strategy

Start with what you need the learners to do, then check class size and how much preparation you can give it.

Match the strategy to your goal

If you need to	Try	Class size	Your prep
Check understanding right now	Retrieval practice or a concept question vote	Any	Low
Get every student talking	Think-pair-share	Any	Low
Correct a common misconception	Peer instruction	Any, including large lectures	Medium: write good questions
Deepen a discussion and make students reflect	Structured discussion with a written reflection	Small groups	Low to medium
Cover a lot of material through peers	Jigsaw	Any, in groups of five or six	Medium: split the material
Build judgment for real decisions	Case-based learning	Any	High: find or write cases
Teach self-directed problem solving	Problem-based learning	Small groups with a facilitator	High
Make sure students prepare	Team-based learning or just-in-time teaching	Any	Medium to high
Free class time for practice	Flipped classroom	Any	High at first, then reusable
Teach visual or spatial ideas	Drawing to learn	Any	Low

11 active learning strategies and how to run them

1. Retrieval practice

Learners pull information out of memory instead of reading it again. It needs no materials and fits at the start of any class.

1. Ask a few short questions about earlier material with notes closed.
2. Have every learner answer in writing or by poll.
3. Show the answers, and let learners check and correct their own.
4. Ask about the same ideas again in a later class.

Keep the stakes low. The goal is practice, and a heavy grade turns it into a test that learners cram for. Our active recall example shows the same idea inside a video.

2. Think-pair-share

Frank Lyman of the University of Maryland proposed think-pair-share in the 1980s. It gets an answer from every student in about five minutes.

1. Pose an open question that has more than one defensible answer.
2. Give one minute of silent thinking, ideally with writing (write-pair-share).
3. Pairs compare answers for two or three minutes.
4. Call on a few pairs at random to share with the room.

3. Peer instruction

Eric Mazur introduced peer instruction in Harvard physics courses in 1991. After ten years, Crouch and Mazur reported better conceptual reasoning and better quantitative problem solving (American Journal of Physics, 2001).

1. Before class, students read and submit short written responses to the reading. Crouch and Mazur replaced in-class reading quizzes with this step.
2. In class, pose a conceptual multiple-choice question whose wrong answers match common mistakes.
3. Every student votes individually, by clicker, app, or cards.
4. Students try to convince a neighbor who chose differently.
5. Everyone votes again, and you explain the answer.

If nearly everyone gets the first vote right, confirm the answer and move on. If nearly everyone gets it wrong, the discussion has little to work with, so reteach the idea before you ask again.

4. Structured discussion with reflection

Without structure, a class discussion can turn into a conversation between the teacher and a few confident students. These steps spread the talking:

1. Give a prompt that forces a choice, such as "Which of these two explanations is stronger, and what evidence decides it?"
2. Put students in small groups with rotating roles, such as facilitator, skeptic, and note-taker.
3. Require a round: everyone speaks once before anyone speaks twice.
4. Each group reports its decision and its best piece of evidence.
5. End with a written reflection. The minute paper (what was most important, and what question remains) and the muddiest point (what is still unclear) each take one to two minutes. Carnegie Mellon's Eberly Center has a guide to both techniques, which come from Angelo and Cross's 1993 handbook.

Read the reflections before the next session and start with the most common confusion.

5. Collaborative learning and the jigsaw

Collaborative learning means students work in small groups toward a shared goal, with the task set up so that each member's work is needed and each member is accountable for learning all of it. Cooperative learning has a long research base: a 2009 review by David and Roger Johnson counted more than 1,200 studies of cooperative, competitive, and individual effort (Educational Researcher, 2009).

The jigsaw, created by Elliot Aronson in Austin, Texas, in 1971, is the best-known structure. The steps below follow jigsaw.org:

1. Form diverse groups of five or six students and appoint a leader.
2. Split the lesson into five or six segments and give each student one segment.
3. Students who have the same segment meet in an "expert group" to discuss and rehearse it.
4. Students return to their home groups and teach their segment.
5. Circulate, and end with a quiz on all segments.

For science courses, Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning (POGIL) is another structured form: self-managed teams work through activities that guide them to build a concept, while the instructor facilitates.

6. Case-based learning

Cases put learners in the position of someone who has to decide. Harvard Business School students read about 500 cases in the two-year MBA, and students do most of the talking in class (HBS).

1. Pick a case with a real decision and no single right answer.
2. Assign it with two or three questions that learners answer before class.
3. Open with "What would you do, and why?" and ask for a show of hands on the options.
4. Push each position for evidence from the case.
5. Close by connecting the decision to the principle you want learners to keep.

In training, a case can be a short video that stops at the decision point. Our guide to scenario-based training covers how to write one.

7. Problem-based learning

McMaster University's medical school started the world's first problem-based learning program in 1969 (Health Professions Education, 2019). The problem comes before the teaching.

1. Present an open, realistic problem, such as a patient's symptoms or a failing product line.
2. The group lists what it knows, what it needs to find out, and who will find it.
3. Members research on their own and bring back what they found.
4. The group proposes a solution and defends it.
5. A facilitator asks questions throughout and does not give answers.

8. Team-based learning

Larry Michaelsen developed team-based learning in 1979, when a class Michaelsen taught grew from 40 to 120 students (Team-Based Learning Collaborative). It turns preparation into something the team depends on.

1. Form permanent teams of five to seven, assigned by the instructor across backgrounds.
2. Students complete the reading or video before each unit.
3. Each unit opens with a readiness test taken individually, then again as a team. Many instructors use scratch-off cards for the team test, which give full credit for a first-try answer.
4. Teams can appeal questions they think were unfair.
5. The rest of the unit goes to application problems that follow the "4 S" rule: a significant problem, the same problem for all teams, a specific choice, and simultaneous reporting.

9. Just-in-time teaching

Just-in-time teaching was first developed for physics courses in 1999 and has since spread to many other subjects (SERC, Carleton College). Students answer brief online questions before class, and the instructor plans the class around their answers.

1. Post a few warm-up questions about the upcoming material, including one that asks what is confusing.
2. Close submissions a few hours before class.
3. Read the answers and group them by the kind of thinking they show, such as common errors and good reasoning.
4. Open class with a few anonymous examples, and spend the time on the gaps.

10. Flipped classroom

In a flipped classroom, students meet new material before class and use class time for practice with the teacher present. The Flipped Learning Network, whose board members included Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams, published a formal definition in 2014 (Flipped Learning Network).

1. Split the material into short videos, one idea each. In a study of 6.9 million video sessions on edX, median engagement time was at most 6 minutes regardless of video length (Guo, Kim, and Rubin, 2014).
2. Put questions inside each video so students cannot just let it play.
3. Read the answers before class, as in just-in-time teaching.
4. Spend class on problems, discussion, and feedback.

See how teachers set this up in Mindstamp on our flipped classroom page.

11. Drawing to learn

Drawing what you are learning helps you remember it. In seven experiments, Wammes, Meade, and Fernandes found that people recalled words they had drawn better than words they had written out (Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2016). A later summary reported larger gains from drawing than from elaboration, visualization, writing, or tracing, for words, pictures, and textbook definitions (Fernandes, Wammes, and Meade, 2018). Those studies tested memory, so treat gains in understanding of complex systems as likely but less tested.

1. Ask learners to sketch a process or structure from memory, such as the steps of mitosis or the flow of a support ticket.
2. Have them label the parts and add arrows for cause and effect.
3. Show an expert diagram and let them mark what they missed.
4. Pairs explain their drawings to each other.

In video lessons, a drawing response question lets learners circle or sketch on the frame and keeps the drawing as their answer.

Active learning strategies for online teaching

Most of the strategies above carry over to online teaching with small changes. In live sessions, run votes with a polling tool, send breakout groups off with a shared document they must fill in, and try a chat waterfall: everyone types an answer, and the whole class presses Enter at the same moment so nobody copies the first reply.

Asynchronous courses need the activity built into the material. Szpunar, Khan, and Schacter found that short tests placed between segments of an online lecture reduced mind wandering and improved learning (PNAS, 2013). Pair that with the strategies above: pre-class questions for just-in-time teaching, a poll as the first vote of peer instruction, and a recorded explanation as a teach-back.

In Mindstamp, you add interactions to a video you already have, and a question pauses the video at the second you choose. For online active learning, the parts that matter most are:

• Required questions, with an option on supported plans that stops learners from seeking past a question until they answer (how to stop skipping ahead).
• Display Poll, which shows a chart of how all viewers answered.
• Drawing, video, and voice responses, with recorded answers of up to 120 seconds.
• Branching that sends a learner who misses a question to a review clip.
• A per-learner report of every answer, and a SCORM package that sends completion and score to a compatible LMS (SCORM export).

Across 8.07 million views of 18,315 Mindstamp videos (2018 to October 2026), videos where viewers took more than three actions per view averaged 51.8% of each video watched, compared with 43.9% for videos where viewers took no action. Many factors differ between these videos, so treat this as a pattern, not proof. For a step-by-step build, read how to create an interactive video quiz.

Active learning tools

Most strategies need nothing more than paper. Tools help when the class is large, remote, or asynchronous, or when you need a record of each answer.

Active learning tools by job, from each vendor's website, checked October 2026

Tool	What it does	Fits these strategies
Poll Everywhere	Live polls, word clouds, Q&A, Likert scales, and clickable images inside PowerPoint, Google Slides, and other presentations	Peer instruction votes, retrieval questions in live lectures
Mentimeter	Polls, quizzes, word clouds, and Q&A, in the room or online	Live votes and discussion prompts
Kahoot!	Game-based quizzes for school, work, and home	Retrieval practice
Perusall	Social annotation: students comment and ask questions on readings, videos, and audio	Pre-class work for just-in-time teaching and flipped classes
Edpuzzle	Interactive video lessons that integrate with an LMS and track student progress	Flipped lessons in schools
H5P Interactive Video	Open-source content type that adds multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions and pop-up text to video, in systems such as Canvas, Brightspace, Blackboard, Moodle, and WordPress	In-video retrieval questions inside an LMS
Mindstamp	13 question types at exact timecodes, branching, drawing and recorded responses, and per-learner reports, on video you already host	Flipped lessons, scenarios, and workplace training that needs each learner's answers

Active learning advice for parents

Parents can use the same ideas at home, and none of them need special materials:

• Ask your child to teach you what they learned today. If they get stuck, ask "How do you know?" instead of explaining it for them.
• Before a test, quiz instead of rereading. Recall builds memory better than rereading, as the Roediger and Karpicke study above showed.
• Before you turn the page of a story, ask what will happen next and why.
• Ask your child to draw how something works, such as the water cycle, and explain the drawing to you.
• Let them work on a hard problem for a few minutes before you help, then ask how they figured it out.

More home activities are in our list of active learning examples.

Common problems and how to fix them

Common problems with active learning

Problem	Fix
Students say they learn more from lectures	Tell them early in the term that effortful learning can feel worse while it works better, and show them the Deslauriers study
There is no time to cover the content	Start with two-minute activities, and move first exposure to pre-class videos or readings with questions
The class is too large	Use votes and pair discussion; Freeman found benefits in classes of every size
A few students do all the group work	Require an individual answer before group work, assign roles, and end with an individual quiz
Students skip the pre-work	Make it count: a readiness test, required in-video questions, or answers you read and use in class

Common questions

Which active learning strategy builds critical thinking?

Choose strategies that make learners judge evidence: case-based learning, problem-based learning, structured debate, and peer instruction when students must justify their vote. Whatever strategy you use, ask "What is your evidence?" after every answer.

Which active learning strategies work in higher education?

Each strategy above is used in college courses, and the large studies cited here took place in higher education. For large lectures, start with peer instruction, think-pair-share, and short pauses for students to compare notes, because they need no change to the room or the syllabus.

How can you transfer learning into performance and share it with peers?

One method to transfer practice into performance: write down one specific situation in the coming week where you will use the new skill, use it, and review the result with your manager or a colleague against a short checklist. One way to share your learning with peers: run a ten-minute teach-back at a team meeting, or record a short video walkthrough that ends with a question your colleagues have to answer.

What are engaging learning techniques for adults?

For adults, choose activities that look like their work: case discussions, role plays with an observer checklist, branching scenarios, and teach-backs. Our active learning examples include a workplace section with each of these.

Pick one strategy from the table above for your next session, and start small: one think-pair-share or one retrieval question per class. If your lessons happen on video, add a question at the point each idea is taught and read the answers before you meet. For lessons that change based on each learner's answers, see our guides to adaptive learning examples and personalized learning pathways.