What is it?

Active learning positions learners of all ages as co-creators of knowledge and experience. It is participatory, informal, interest-driven and relevant to real life. Active learning emphasizes the vital connection between interests, peer interaction, and learning content, and adheres to four learning principles:

• Everyone can participate.
• Learning happens by doing.
• Challenge is constant.
• Everything is interconnected.

What’s good about active learning?

It fosters independent thinking.

• Active learning yields tremendous cognitive benefits through increased engagement, greater retention, greater understanding, and development of thinking and application skills.
• When students are offered multiple opportunities to actively engage and interact with objects, participate in social activities, and reflect on their discoveries, greater learning occurs.

It engages the power of the hand-brain connection –learning by doing.

• When students are offered multiple opportunities to actively engage and interact with objects, participate in social activities, and reflect on their discoveries, greater learning occurs.

It creates sense of community.

• Learning is social; participation in a community increases the motivation to learn.

 (Sources: Seven Surprising Benefits of Maker Spaces; Active learning: theories and research)

What does active learning look like in a library?

An active learning space can take a variety of forms. It can be a makerspace, but that is just one of many possibilities

1. Early Learning and Play

The Library Corner at the Eldon Public Library (IA, service pop. 1,900) is an interactive, multimedia space designed to engage families in activities that develop early literacy and math skills. This brightly colored children's corner offers more than just a fun place to play — it is filled with age-appropriate materials to help youngsters want to learn, where families can spend time together reading books, engaging in hands-on activities and playing online games that support early learning skills. In partnership with the school district and Iowa Public Television, Eldon Public Library is an active participant in the IPTV Ready for School initiative to strengthen learning among children between the ages of 2 and 8 years old in dozens of Iowa communities.

2. Community Gardening

Children’s Learning Garden. The garden programming offered by the library includes Makin’ Music, Kid’s Zumba, and a Ladybug Party, which involves ladybug fun facts, a craft, releasing ladybugs and a ladybug snack. There are also Sprouting Chefs cooking classes, Insect Safaris to explore insect life in the garden, outdoor storytimes, and of course, planting times to get those bush beans, cucumbers, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and herbs growing.

3. Learning Circles

Although this example comes from the large urban Chicago Public Library, the Learning Circle idea can be implemented anywhere at any size. It’s all about the social aspect of learning and the reality that many people are taking online courses and feeling isolated. Public libraries have a unique opportunity to augment the advantages of online learning by convening study groups for people who want to take online courses together, in-person. With only light facilitation by library staff, these groups allow learning at different paces, while engaging with and asking questions of fellow learners. WebJunction has compiled a Facilitator Guide that provides a framework for organizing, structuring and leading a group of learners through self-paced courses on any topic.

4. Creative Space for All Ages

The Bellingham Public Library (WA, service pop 82,000) cleared some floor space near the entrance of the library and left it to the community to decide how to activate it. Now in operation for over two years, there is something happening in the SkillShare space almost every day in a typical month. The calendar is filled with a combination of programs offered by community members and those offered by library staff, including tai chi, financial literacy, making felt pictures, tech coaching and the ever­popular knit night. SkillShare users are diverse―children, families, the elderly, homeless and people from all walks of life.

5. Makerspace and Digital Media Lab

Middletown Free Library (PA, service pop. 16,000) designed CreateSpace ― a pop-up makerspace & digital media lab, which offers digital media equipment, 3-D printers, craft cutters and even sewing machines. Due to space limitations in the library, the lab was designed to be portable for set up in a small corner of the library or for taking programs and tools out into the community. In one episode of ReCreate Camp, a monthly STE(A)M camp, kids are asked to make something out of the given recycled supplies. It is up to the kids to rethink, reuse, and recreate to make it again or make it better.

Are you inspired to create your active learning space?

 

Photo credits
1) Flickr,
2) Bellingham Public Library