Planning for Active Learning

Teaching with active learning requires a different kind of preparation than lecture-only teaching. In addition to preparing your content, you'll also need to plan for timing, flow, transitions, and facilitation. Without this planning, even the most thoughtfully designed methods, materials, and environments can fall flat.

Both instructors and students bring variability to their teaching and learning contexts. For instructors, differences in teaching experience, comfort with facilitation, and the affordances of assigned classrooms can shape how active learning unfolds. Instructors' experiences facilitating active learning can be influenced as much by the challenges they anticipate and prepare for as by the activities themselves (Murphy et al., 2024).

For students, learning is more effective when activities are well scaffolded and connected to clear outcomes (Barkley & Major, 2022; Zakrajsek & Nilson, 2023). Careful planning also makes active learning feel smoother and more purposeful, increasing buy‑in.

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Learning About Your Learners

Planning for active learning also means anticipating the students who will take part in it. Learners bring diverse strengths, needs, and circumstances to the classroom. This variability can include neurodiversity, prior disciplinary experience, language backgrounds, or situational factors such as work and caregiving responsibilities.

The U of T undergraduate learning community is highly diverse. Some key metrics illustrate the student population you are likely to encounter (Student Life, UTSG):

66% live off campus
28% are international students
25% of first‑year students have parents with no post‑secondary education
34% speak a language other than English at home
40% work off campus
25% spend 6+ hours/week on co‑curricular activities
72% identify as non‑white
21% identify as LGBTQ+
5,000+ students are registered with Accessibility Services

Within this diversity, students may encounter barriers to learning that are not about ability but about context and design. Examples include:

Feeling lonely or isolated when away from family supports
Entering a course without sufficient background knowledge or skills
Lacking strategies to adapt to feedback on assessments
Struggling with unfamiliar vocabulary, especially for multilingual learners
Experiencing lessons as culturally irrelevant or disconnected from their interests

Building in opportunities to learn about your learners will help you connect design choices from Module 2 (methods, materials, environments) with the realities of your teaching context. Some strategies include:

Start-of-Term Surveys

Ask students about prior experience with the subject, comfort with participation, or preferred ways of engaging (e.g., written vs spoken).

Learning Goals

Invite students to set personal goals for the course, then reflect on them at mid-term or at the end of the term.

Check-Ins

Use short polls or entry/exit tickets to gauge workload, pace, or points of confusion.

Once you have a sense of who your learners are, the next step is to plan the timing, flow, and structure of your sessions.

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Key Elements of an Active Learning Plan

When preparing an active learning experience, consider:

Active Learning Plan Elements
Elements	Considerations
Timing and flow	Break longer sessions into shorter segments (10–15 minutes of input followed by activity or reflection). Build in time for debriefs.
Transitions	Plan how you will move into and out of activities (e.g., slide prompts, verbal cues, countdowns).
Clear instructions	Provide concise directions, repeat them in multiple formats (spoken, on slides, posted in Quercus).
Connections to outcomes	Make explicit why an activity matters ("This case study will help you practice applying today's concept to real-world scenarios").
Flexibility	Be ready to adapt if timing, technology, or participation doesn't go as planned.

UDL Scaffolds to Consider

When drafting your active learning plan, ask yourself:

Access: Are instructions available in multiple formats (spoken, written, visual)? Are students given time to enter the task?
Support: Do you scaffold complex activities with smaller steps or prompts?
Executive Function: Do you provide an agenda, checklist, or time markers to help students manage the activity?

scaffolds

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Examples of Planning in Practice

The examples below illustrate how instructors across disciplines structure active learning plans by combining methods, materials, and environments into a coherent class session. Use these examples as inspiration, but adapt them to your own situational factors and design choices.

Active Learning Planning Examples
Contexts	Active Learning Plans
Arts (Visual Arts/Performance)	In a studio-based course, the instructor plans a 3-hour session around a design challenge. Students spend the first 20 minutes reviewing exemplar works and criteria, 90 minutes creating or rehearsing in small groups, and 30 minutes presenting to peers for structured feedback. The final 20 minutes are reserved for class discussion and instructor synthesis.
Humanities (History)	A history instructor provides guiding questions on slides and in Quercus before a primary source analysis. During class, students first review documents individually, then discuss in pairs, and finally share interpretations in a facilitated whole-class debrief.
Social Sciences (Sociology)	A sociology course begins with 10 minutes of lecture framing, then moves into small group discussions of key questions from the assigned reading. Groups summarize their conclusions on a shared document, which the instructor uses to lead a whole-class synthesis.
Life Sciences (Biology)	A biology instructor structures a 50-minute class with two short polling questions followed by 2-minute peer discussions. Each is displayed with a clear prompt and countdown timer, then debriefed to connect back to the learning outcomes.
Physical Sciences (Physics)	In a 50-minute physics lecture, the instructor alternates between 15 minutes of worked examples, a polling question with peer discussion, and a 10-minute group problem-solving activity, closing with a short wrap-up.
Engineering (Civil Engineering)	A 75-minute session is planned as a sequence: mini lecture on a design principle, then a group application task (teams sketch possible solutions on whiteboards), then a debrief and comparison across groups.
Professional Programs (Nursing/Medicine)	A case-based learning session includes a short instructor overview, team analysis of a patient scenario, role play of communication with the patient, and a debrief focused on clinical reasoning and empathy.
Professional Programs (Business/Management)	A business instructor plans a 90-minute case study session by first assigning pre-class readings and reflection questions in Quercus. In class, students work in small teams to analyze the case for 20 minutes, present their recommendations in 5 minutes each, and then participate in a structured debrief comparing strategies across groups.
Professional Programs (Law)	A moot court simulation is broken into timed segments: 5 minutes of preparation in teams, 10 minutes of oral argument with roles assigned, and 5 minutes of structured feedback. Expectations are shared in advance through rubrics and instructions.

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Pause for Workbook Activity: Lesson/Facilitation Plan

In your ALDF Workbook docx, choose one of the active learning methods you identified earlier in Module 2. Plan how you will integrate this method into an upcoming class session. Use the table provided to map out your approach.

As you complete this activity, draw on what you noted about student variability (e.g., neurodiversity, prior knowledge, situational factors) and instructor variability (e.g., your own teaching experience, facilitation style, or environment affordances). This will help you anticipate barriers and plan supports more effectively.

My Active Learning Lesson/Facilitation Plan
Components	My Notes
Learning outcome(s) for this class	[My notes]
Method(s) I will use	[My notes]
Material(s) I will need	[My notes]
Environment(s) I will use	[My notes]
Timing and flow (segments, transitions)	[My notes]
Instructions for students	[My notes]
Barriers and supports for student variability	[My notes]
Barriers and supports for instructor variability	[My notes]

Consider how you will adapt if timing, technology, or participation doesn't go as planned.

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University of Toronto, Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation