When considering active learning, I find the work of Ron Ritchhart and his colleagues at Harvard’s Project Zero most helpful. Richhart et al. (2011) designed simple, active learning strategies to be woven into classroom practice to scaffold thinking and make it visible.

What I appreciate about framing active learning as making thinking visible, is that it assumes competence—we start from the premise that students are thinking. From this premise we invite participation in active learning strategies (or “thinking routines”) to make thinking visible to oneself and others. Encouraging students to make thinking visible is inherently an active process, rather than a passive one of absorbing content.

In many classroom settings, the focus is on completion of work and assignments rather than a true development of understanding. The opposite is also true in some classrooms termed “experiential or inquiry-based” where students are provided with lots of activities; often the activity is simply a more palatable form of practice (such as playing Jeopardy for test review). In active learning, the educator must be intentional about the types of thinking she wishes to make visible so that an accurate assessment of how students understand becomes clear, providing evidence of insight as well as misconception. 

Making thinking visible provides us with the information we need to plan opportunities to extend thinking and engage with new ideas and concepts. Ritchhart et al. (2011) share twenty-one active learning strategies to support three types of thinking:

• Routines for introducing and exploring ideas (for example, See-Think-Wonder)
• Routines for synthesizing and organizing ideas (for example, “I used to think.. Now I think”)
• Routines for digging deeper into ideas (for example, “Circle of Viewpoints”)

The Principia College Educational Studies Department assigns the Richhart et al. (2011) text in Ed Block, and there is a digital version available through the library. The faculty use these strategies in face-to-face classrooms, synchronous and asynchronous environments with overwhelming success. For example, rather than asking students to define curriculum on the discussion board this week, I invited them to make their thinking visible by sharing what they used to think curriculum was, and what they now think curriculum is. The responses were authentic and led to a discussion about how they no longer view curriculum as a noun (set in stone, fixed plan) but as a verb (culture, flexible).  Using the strategies on asynchronous discussion boards has turned online engagement around and is often noted by students in course evaluations.  Please reach out to me or my  colleagues if you would like to borrow a copy of the book and discuss the ideas further.

Richhart, R., Church, M., & Morrison, K. (2011). Making Thinking Visible: How to Promote Engagement, Understanding, and Independence for All Learners. Jossey-Bass.