Active Learning in Higher Education

A B S T R AC T Learning and understanding are often differentiated and distinguished from each other in people's experience and thinking, but they are necessarily related to each other. This relationship is visible in examples of how individuals express what they mean by learning. Starting from an observed similarity of expression, an idea is presented about how understanding may be appropriately described for pedagogy. Several examples of conceptual learning are highlighted and characterized in terms of the learners' experiences of variation in critical dimensions of the learning task. However, systematic variation of the learners' task has seldom been a primary theme in research except in the particular domains of perceptual and motor skills. By reconsidering the ways in which what is learned differs when skill practice conditions are systematically varied leads to a reorientation of our interpretation of what it is that is learned. It seems that it is something about the variation experienced that is learned. The resulting understanding can then be seen as the space of experiential variation. This article seeks to set out a way of thinking about understanding that has important implications for the design of the experiences which are offered to university students. It largely follows the structure of a conversation between the two authors which began in Gothenburg in 1997. The first section following this introduction presents the observed similarity in the way in which the relationship between learning and understanding is expressed in a range of settings. In the second section several examples of conceptual learning are active learning in higher education highlighted and characterized in terms of the learners' experiences of variation in critical dimensions of a learning task. However, systematic variation of the different parameters of the learners' task has seldom been a primary theme in research into learning. An exception is in the particular domains of perceptual and motor skills. The third section presents some of the robust findings from that field of study. In the fourth part, reconsidering the ways in which what is learned differ when skill practice conditions are systematically varied leads to a reorientation of our interpretation of what it is that is learned. We attempt to pull together the experiences we have had in thinking about variation in the experience of learning and its relationship to understanding. We are drawn to the conclusion that it is, above all, something about the variation that …