Quasi-active Learning: An Approach to Blending Active Learning and Lecture

While many of us know by now that lecture alone is incongruent with student learning, it remains the predominant form of teaching—and understandably so. Pedagogical change is not a natural function in college classrooms, and it is challenging to learn and implement new teaching strategies. Accepting that many of us are comfortable in lectures, it may be impractical to abandon lecture and embrace fully student-centered active learning. An injection of active learning in lectures may transform our teaching into a win-win situation: we could have a solid lecture as a guiding tool for incorporating active learning and develop “quasi-active” learning in our classrooms (He, 2021). Below are the three phases of quasi-active learning that you can implement in your classes.