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The aim of this study is to understand classroom settings desired by high school students and teachers in an active learning classroom. The research question is whether students and teachers will differ from each other when designing an active learning classroom.

In an effort to design a learning environment for an advanced placement programme, action research methodology was followed by conducting a participatory workshop in a real active learning classroom with future users. Working in isolation from one another, students and teachers designed their own classrooms by forming different learning centres. During the study, two groups, made up of ten high school students and seven teachers, respectively, were asked to arrange the furniture in an active learning classroom. The groups were free to form as many furniture arrangement configurations as they wished and were asked to write about their workshop experiences afterwards. Once they had completed both tasks, their plan layouts were examined.

All of the plan layouts were found to fall into one of three categories: a traditional layout, a small group layout or a single large group layout. The written texts were also analysed, which revealed different perspectives of each participating group. As students and teachers explore different learning opportunities, they appear to be driven by different kinds of experiences when they endeavour to organize their classrooms.

Never before has an active learning classroom been the site for a participatory furniture arrangement workshop that employs teachers and students.

This chapter outlines potential steps to take in designing active learning experiences based on several theories underlying the learning process. The chapter examines theories of learning and instruction including information processing, schema acquisition, and cognitive load theory. Next follows an explanation of how these theories support problem-centered learning as well as a rationale for the need to help learners develop domain-general, flexible problem-solving skills that will transfer to future needs and contexts. The second half of the chapter focuses on designing active learning experiences based on the selection of real-world problems as the foundation for learning, activating prior knowledge, demonstration of the process or concept, multiple opportunities for practice with relevant scaffolding, and the chance to integrate that knowledge into the learners’ own context based on M. D. Merrill’s (2002) First Principles of Instruction. Examples of assessments, strategies, and activities to foster active, problem-centered learning drawn from the literature are also provided.

This chapter describes and analyzes the result of an active, cooperative learning design adopted in “Change Management,” an elective course at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), which is a fully online university. The paper describes the context and foundations that support the learning design, outlines the learning activities and their evolution, and presents the results of a student survey to assess the design’s effectiveness in reaching its main goals. The results of the survey suggest that students perceived this design as enhancing their teamwork abilities, while being interesting and motivating, as well as useful in learning the course’s content. Therefore, the desired goals were attained and the design was kept, with minor changes, in subsequent editions of the course. In addition, students without prior teamwork experience valued the collaborative activities more than students who had previously worked in teams in other subjects of their degrees. In contrast, no differences were found for individual learning activities. This suggests that the design can be useful in introductory courses where students are asked to learn in virtual teams for the first time.

HyFlex course design is an effective instructional course design that combines active and transformative learning techniques. HyFlex course design encourages active learning by focusing on interactive activities, discussions, and collaboration. It also allows learners to collaborate effectively and flexibly as a community, providing peer support and opportunities for authentic dialogue and learning experiences. HyFlex course design provides the opportunity for transformative learning through its ability to offer personalized educational experiences to individuals. It facilitates greater customization of the learning experience, allowing individual learners to access tailored educational modules, offer personalized educational experiences to individuals, and effectively develop and build independent and critical thinking skills. This conceptual review, supported by implications from HyFlex literature and triangulated with experts' views undertaking a Delphi study, facilitates understanding the current state of research in HyFlex course design and future application strategies. Existing research has identified HyFlex courses as a promising means of engaging students in active learning. Allowing students to learn through flexibly predesigned mixed online and in-person experiences enables higher levels of student autonomy and supports students in taking more ownership of their learning. This approach can facilitate an understanding of how HyFlex courses can improve active learning practices in higher education. The review study findings identify the reported alignment issues and challenges, suggest four strategies and actions for policymakers and stakeholders, and provide a suggested research agenda for bridging identified research gaps.

Future research can provide evidence of the benefits of HyFlex course design and how flexible course design can address the challenges of traditional face-to-face courses, such as reduced student engagement, lack of student-centered approaches, and limited support for different learning styles. Further research can focus on strategies that can be used to promote active learning in HyFlex courses. Moreover, research can investigate how this kind of course design can equip educators with the skills and knowledge needed to design and implement effective and meaningful active learning experiences. Finally, research can assess the potential impact of HyFlex course design on student outcomes, including performance, satisfaction, and engagement.

The aim of this study is to understand the effect of class configurations in an active learning classroom (ALC) on students' self-perception of experiences and learning outcomes, namely participation, performance, motivation and creativity.

A self-administered survey (N = 131) was conducted in seven classes from the varied disciplines of communication, interior design and architecture. During the first half of the semester, all selected courses were conducted in traditional classrooms, whereas those in the second half were conducted in an ALC. ALC was designed to be used with several furniture configurations which could be easily set up by members of the learning community themselves. The survey was conducted at the end of semester before final exams, when students have a clear idea of the experiences in both the traditional and the new (ALC) classrooms, having spent equal time in each of these learning environments.

The main finding of the study is that students were eager to have future classes in the ALC rather than in traditional settings since the students experienced better learning outcomes in the ALC. During the second half of the semester, students who were in classes conducted following active learning (AL) pedagogies, with its supportive spatial configurations, were more aware of the learning outcomes facilitated by the physical environment. Further, the authors found that the increase in the number of furniture configurations has a statistically significant positive impact on learning outcomes.

AL pedagogy is often studied as a way of teaching and rarely with its associated classroom environments. In most of the existing studies, the configuration of furniture has often been overlooked within an AL environment by a learning community. This study fills the gap in emphasising the spatial aspects of the ALC by focusing on the specific pedagogy being followed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on connecting recent conceptualizations of learning space design in management education by examining interior building and classroom design.

This study used mixed methods research: external benchmarking with same industry institutions (n=5) and two surveys of students (n=131) and faculty members (n=38).

The process helped to envision how a business school could improve by adapting design aspects from industry peers, understanding the needs of students and faculty, and incorporating new teaching methods and instructional technologies to inform learning space solutions.

The small number of external benchmarking partners may make the findings more applicable to the institutional type examined. Yet, the findings and the mixed methods research have implications for learning space design more broadly.

With the business school building boom, the external architecture of new buildings appears to garner much of the attention. However, the researchers believe that the real impact of new business schools is the centrality of interior learning space design and technology.

This paper uses a mixed methods research approach to examine learning space theory and research in relation to a particular business school’s efforts to use this knowledge to design learning spaces in a new building.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of an accounting education pedagogy incorporating active learning approaches designed to engage first-year undergraduate business students and to aspire them to continue accounting as their academic major and entry into the accounting profession.

Data were collected from a questionnaire with a pre-/post-test design of 24 undergraduate business students enrolled in a course titled Accounting Active Learning Seminar (AALS) (test group) and 33 students who did not participate in the AALS (control group). The AALS incorporates various types of active learning methods designed by the authors to inspire students to continue with accounting as a career choice.

The findings show that participation in the AALS improved student’s motivation in accounting education and the likelihood of choosing accounting as their academic major. The active learning methods implemented in the AALS were effective in improving students’ confidence, of which degree contributed to students’ stronger works aspiration towards accounting professions. Further it was found that students who did not participate in the AALS tended to have lower attention dimensions of motivation, which was also significantly associated with lower percentage of students’ choice of academic major in accounting.

This is one of the few studies to empirically examine active learning on student engagement and performance with a focus on accounting. While the evidence shows that active learning has pedagogical benefits, the full potential of active learning is more likely to be realized when accounting educators design active learning carefully to address the “attention” and “confidence” attributes.

Educational design patterns offer practical strategies that can be shared and adapted to address problems in teaching and learning. This article explores how educational design patterns for connected learning at scale at an Australian university may be adapted to a Vietnamese higher education context.

12 educational design patterns that address the challenges of active learning and large teaching team management are discussed. The authors then critically reflect on their cross-cultural adaptation for the higher education context, from an Australian to a Vietnamese university.

Transitioning from passive to active learning strategies and effectively leading large teaching teams present similar challenges across our contexts. Educational design patterns, when dynamically adapted, may assist educators to teach skills that are critical for work and the future. Higher education institutions globally could enhance their practices by incorporating international best practice approaches to educational design.

The Connected Learning at Scale (CLaS) educational design patterns explored in this article offer solution-oriented strategies that promote a more active learning experience. This paper identifies adaptations for educators, especially those in Vietnamese higher education that respect traditional structures, cultural nuances and resource limitations in implementation.

Whilst educational design patterns are well-researched in the Western contexts, few studies analyse design patterns in an Asian, and in particular the Vietnamese context. More research is needed in the cross-cultural adaptation of educational design patterns that joins practice and theory.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a classroom design for introductory financial accounting that promotes active learning through a flipped classroom approach. A course learning management system, white-board voice-over video applications, an online homework manager and online tutorials pre-packaged with the course textbook were all adopted to facilitate the flipped classroom. The in-class sessions were refocussed around active learning strategies, including case analysis, concept mapping, solving comprehensive problems, mini lectures with bookends, and small group discussions.

A quasi-experimental design, combined with student surveys, are utilized. A Wilcoxon rank-sum test is used to assess the significance of any difference in student performance between a lecture-based course (control group, n=92) and the flipped classroom course (experimental group, n=97). Student performance is measured based on final exams and overall course grades.

The results suggest that the flipped classroom improved student grade point averages, final exam performance, and pass rates. Both the stronger and weaker students benefited from the technologies and active learning strategies adopted in the flipped classroom.

This is the first known study to investigate the efficacy of promoting active learning in introductory financial accounting through a flipped classroom design. This study is valuable for accounting educators, and educators in other similarly technical disciplines, who seek to combat the high failure rates that typically plague complex, technical introductory courses.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, higher education instructors were forced to make necessary changes in the conversion from face to face instruction to the use of online and virtual platforms. Even before this shift, scholars have long advocated the introduction of active and constructivist learning practices, and to move away from the traditional lecture as a means to disseminate information in the classroom. This chapter highlights ways in which active learning and constructivist-related activities such as motivational activities, critical-thinking activities, creative-thinking activities, and collaborative learning activities can be employed in the online classroom for successful teaching practice. Also detailed is a case study of the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation of a Jigsaw activity used in a Master’s level human resource development (HRD) course. HRD as a field takes well to learner centered instruction, as it is an applied discipline that is deeply concerned with the aspirational development of adults in training, organization change, and careers. Lessons learned from the deployment of active learning and constructivist-related activities within the case are adaptable and applicable for online instructors both in and outside of the field of HRD who are interested in building such experiences for students in online programs.