What Do Active Learners Do? There are differences betwee

What Do Active Learners Do?
    Good morning. Today, I’ll discuss what is active learning and uh…what do active learners do. In order to define active learning, I’ll look at the differences between active learning and passive learning by examining six characteristics of active learners and contrasting them with those of passive learners.
    OK. Let’s start. With the first characteristic, active learners tend to read with the purpose of understanding and remembering. I bet that no one deliberately sits down to read with the purpose of not understanding the text. However, I’m sure that some of you have been in a situation, probably more than once, where you read, quote and unquote, an assignment, closed the text, and thought, what the world was that about. When you interact with a text in this manner, you are reading passively. (1) Active readers, on the other hand, set goals before they read and check their understanding as they read. When they finish, they can explain the main points and know that they have understood what they have read,
    Now, the second characteristic of active learners is to reflect on information and think critically. Being reflective is an important part of active learning because that means that you are thinking about the information. In other words, you are processing the information. For instance, you may make connections between the new information and what you already know, (3) identify concepts that you may not understand very well, (4) or evaluate the importance of what you are reading. An active learner reflects constantly in this way. In contrast, passive learners may read the text and listen to lectures and even understand most of what is read and heard, but they did not take that crucial next step of actually thinking about it.
    Let’s move on to the third one. (5) The third characteristic is to listen actively by taking comprehensive notes in an organized way, like what you should be doing now. We lecturers are always amazed at the number of students who engage in activities other than listening and note-taking in their lecture classes. We’ve seen students reading newspapers, doing an assignment for another class, or chatting with the classmates. Perhaps the all-time winner for passive learning, however, was a student who regularly came to my class with a pillow and fell asleep. Unlike these students, active learners are engaged learners. They listen actively to the professor for the entire class period, and they write down as much information as possible. To be an active note-taker, you must be more than simply present. You have to think about the information before you write.
    The fourth characteristic is to get assistance when they are experiencing problems. (6) Because active learners are constantly monitoring their understanding, they know when their comprehension breaks down and they ask for help before they become lost. In addition, active learners often predict the courses or even particular concepts within courses that may give them trouble. They have a plan in mind for getting assistance should they need it. Active learners may seek assistance from their professors or peers. Although passive learners may seek help at some point, it is often too little, too late. In addition, because passive learners do not reflect and think critically, they often don’t even realize that they need help.
    The next characteristic is to question information. This means that active learners raise questions on information that they read and hear, while passive learners accept both the printed page and the words of their professors as truth. Of course, active learners don’t question everything, but they do evaluate what they read and hear. (7) When new information fails to fit in with what they already know, they may differ in the conclusions they draw or in the inferences they make.
    The last characteristic, which I think is the most fundamental one, is to accept much of the responsibility for learning. (8) Active learners understand that the responsibility for learning must come from within while passive learners often want to blame others for their lack of motivation, poor performance, time management problems and other difficulties that they might experience. (9) When active learners don’t perform as well as they’d hoped, they evaluate why they didn’t do well and change those studying behaviors the next time. Passive learners, on the other hand, often approach every course in the same manner and then get angry with professors when their performance is poor. It is only when students accept the responsibility for their own learning that they can truly be called active learners.
    So, from what I’ve said so far, you can see that being an active learner involves both skill and will. By skill, I mean the tools to handle the studying and learning demands placed on you, like how to read with purpose, when and where to get assistance if you are having difficulty. By will, I mean the desire and motivation to follow through. Here I’d like to emphasize that skill is nothing without will. For example, you may have a friend who is knowledgeable but not motivated in the classroom. Even though he reads widely and can intelligently discuss a variety of issues, he does little school work and rarely studies. In other words, students such as these may have the skills to do well, but for some reason, they simply do not have the will. (10) And because skill and will go hand in hand, unmotivated students, those who do not have the will, may experience difficulty in college.
    OK. Today, we discussed the differences between an active learner and a passive one, and some useful study strategies that may eventually help you become an active learner.