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Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive
Inspired by the surge of online courses during the COVID 19 pandemic, researcher and educational innovator Stephen M. Kosslyn offers a treasure trove of active learning principles and activities to bring online courses alive.
Whether your course is synchronous (e.g., live with Zoom) or asynchronous (e.g., using video content on Canvas), Active Learning Online will inject your new or existing course with all the benefits of active your course will be more interesting and effective, student engagement will increase, learning outcomes will be reached, and general teaching and learning experiences will be enriched.
At the heart of this book are five key principles from the science of learning that will help to ensure that that taught materials stick in students' (1) deep processing, (2) chunking, (3) building associations, (4) dual coding, and (5) deliberate practice.
Based on these learning principles, Active Learning Online provides a wealth of specific active learning exercises that you can implement in your classes immediately. Further, it provides you with the tools to create your own active learning exercises, tailored to your specific interests and the subject matter of your class.
To provide the very best, scientifically-proven online learning experience (not to mention hybrid and in-person learning experiences), Active Learning Online is an invaluable resource for instructors, course designers, school administrations and teacher-education students.
Whether your course is synchronous (e.g., live with Zoom) or asynchronous (e.g., using video content on Canvas), Active Learning Online will inject your new or existing course with all the benefits of active your course will be more interesting and effective, student engagement will increase, learning outcomes will be reached, and general teaching and learning experiences will be enriched.
At the heart of this book are five key principles from the science of learning that will help to ensure that that taught materials stick in students' (1) deep processing, (2) chunking, (3) building associations, (4) dual coding, and (5) deliberate practice.
Based on these learning principles, Active Learning Online provides a wealth of specific active learning exercises that you can implement in your classes immediately. Further, it provides you with the tools to create your own active learning exercises, tailored to your specific interests and the subject matter of your class.
To provide the very best, scientifically-proven online learning experience (not to mention hybrid and in-person learning experiences), Active Learning Online is an invaluable resource for instructors, course designers, school administrations and teacher-education students.
175 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2020
50 people are currently reading
582 people want to read
About the author
Stephen M. Kosslyn
99 books38 followersStephen Michael Kosslyn (born 1948) is an American psychologist who specializes in the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Until 31 December 2010 he was John Lindsley Professor of Psychology in Memory of William James and Dean of Social Science at Harvard University, having previously been chair of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. As of 1 January 2011, he became director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.
Kosslyn received his B.A. in 1970 from UCLA and his Ph.D. in 1974 from Stanford University, both in psychology. His Ph.D. advisor was Gordon Bower. His former teaching career includes Johns Hopkins and Brandeis Universities.
Kosslyn is known primarily for his research and theories on mental imagery. His theory is that, contrary to common assumption, imagery is not a unified phenomenon. Rather, it consists of a collection of distinct functions, which are responsible for different aspects of imagery. For example, he decomposes imagery into four sets of processes, responsible for generating the image (i.e., activating information stored in long-term memory and constructing a representation in short-term memory), inspecting the object in the image (e.g., by reinterpreting it), maintaining the image over time, and—possibly—transforming the image (e.g., by rotating it, adding or deleting parts, or changing the color). His research, which includes fMRI-imaging and similar techniques, has located some of these functions to different neural networks, some of which are in different cerebral hemispheres of the brain. For example, his laboratory demonstrated that the left half of the brain is better than the right at encoding categories and generating mental images on the basis of categories, whereas the right half of the brain is better than the left at encoding specific examples or continuous distances and at generating images that have such characteristics.
Kosslyn also works on visual display design, showing how psychological principles can be used to produce displays that can be read at a glance. Most recently, he has extended this work to showing how psychological principles of perception, memory, and comprehension can be used to make and deliver PowerPoint presentations.
He has received numerous honors for his research. These include the National Academy of Sciences Initiatives in Research Award, the Prix Jean-Louis Signoret, and three honorary doctorates (from the University of Caen, France; the University of Paris-Descartes, France; the University of Bern, Switzerland). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.
Kosslyn has published over 300 scientific papers and written or co-authored 15 books and edited or co-edited 13 books; his authored books include Image and Mind (1980), Ghosts in the Mind's Machine (1983), Wet Mind (1992, with Olivier Koenig), Elements of Graph Design (1994), Image and Brain (1994), The Case for Mental Imagery (2006, with Thompson and Ganis), Graph Design for the Eye and Mind (2006), Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations (2007), and Better PowerPoint (2010). He is also the co-author (with Rosenberg) of the textbooks Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the World (2000, 2004), Psychology in Context (2006), Abnormal Psychology (2010), and (with Smith) Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain. His forthcoming Top Brain/Bottom Brain (with G. W. Miller) develops a new theory of "cognitive modes" -- different thinking styles that affect how each of us approaches the world and interacts with other people.
Kosslyn received his B.A. in 1970 from UCLA and his Ph.D. in 1974 from Stanford University, both in psychology. His Ph.D. advisor was Gordon Bower. His former teaching career includes Johns Hopkins and Brandeis Universities.
Kosslyn is known primarily for his research and theories on mental imagery. His theory is that, contrary to common assumption, imagery is not a unified phenomenon. Rather, it consists of a collection of distinct functions, which are responsible for different aspects of imagery. For example, he decomposes imagery into four sets of processes, responsible for generating the image (i.e., activating information stored in long-term memory and constructing a representation in short-term memory), inspecting the object in the image (e.g., by reinterpreting it), maintaining the image over time, and—possibly—transforming the image (e.g., by rotating it, adding or deleting parts, or changing the color). His research, which includes fMRI-imaging and similar techniques, has located some of these functions to different neural networks, some of which are in different cerebral hemispheres of the brain. For example, his laboratory demonstrated that the left half of the brain is better than the right at encoding categories and generating mental images on the basis of categories, whereas the right half of the brain is better than the left at encoding specific examples or continuous distances and at generating images that have such characteristics.
Kosslyn also works on visual display design, showing how psychological principles can be used to produce displays that can be read at a glance. Most recently, he has extended this work to showing how psychological principles of perception, memory, and comprehension can be used to make and deliver PowerPoint presentations.
He has received numerous honors for his research. These include the National Academy of Sciences Initiatives in Research Award, the Prix Jean-Louis Signoret, and three honorary doctorates (from the University of Caen, France; the University of Paris-Descartes, France; the University of Bern, Switzerland). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of Experimental Psychologists.
Kosslyn has published over 300 scientific papers and written or co-authored 15 books and edited or co-edited 13 books; his authored books include Image and Mind (1980), Ghosts in the Mind's Machine (1983), Wet Mind (1992, with Olivier Koenig), Elements of Graph Design (1994), Image and Brain (1994), The Case for Mental Imagery (2006, with Thompson and Ganis), Graph Design for the Eye and Mind (2006), Clear and to the Point: 8 Psychological Principles for Compelling PowerPoint Presentations (2007), and Better PowerPoint (2010). He is also the co-author (with Rosenberg) of the textbooks Psychology: The Brain, the Person, the World (2000, 2004), Psychology in Context (2006), Abnormal Psychology (2010), and (with Smith) Cognitive Psychology: Mind and Brain. His forthcoming Top Brain/Bottom Brain (with G. W. Miller) develops a new theory of "cognitive modes" -- different thinking styles that affect how each of us approaches the world and interacts with other people.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 11, 2021
Eh I mean it's OK. Covers some teaching techniques but, doesn't really cover too much material that is new and modern. Would be good for someone just getting into teaching.
January 18, 2024
A good, basic overview of learning science principles and how to apply them in online courses.
May 19, 2021
Kosslyn’s book Active Learning Online comes out at the right time. In this book, he presents 8 principles of learning that are either related to theory or concepts in educational psychology. Kosslyn organizes and explains the concepts in a brisk but comprehensible manner. That is, he does not spend too much time on the theories or concepts, but provides enough to ensure a basic understanding of these ideas and how they relate to students’ learning. If you are familiar with either these theories or have read the work of other books dealing with learning theories (How Learning Works by DiPietro et al, books by Willingham, Creating Significant Learning Experiences by Fink), then this works out since Kosslyn isn’t really charting new territory, but reviewing and connecting essential concepts in learning theories. He also starts the book with an overview of active learning and the science of learning before diving into the main concepts and ideas. While the push for active learning isn’t necessarily new, Kosslyn frames the ideas in his book around the necessity for promoting active learning online and helping teachers and students shift from more passive-reception based learning, where students are merely consumers of knowledge, to developing activities and assignments that apply these learning theories and concepts and require students to make connections, create their own examples, apply, analyze and synthesize the material to fully learn and be able to use the content. In addition to being brief, this book is also practitioner friendly in that Kosslyn provides some excellent examples of the application of the learning theories and concepts. Each chapter focused on learning theories and concepts has at least two different examples of how teachers can create activities and use technology to engage students in active learning that moves them beyond recall and into higher levels of critical thinking. What I also enjoyed about this book was that Kosslyn applies the principles he presents in organizing his ideas and chapters. For example, Chapter 8 is on combining principles and discusses ways that teachers can take different concepts and combine them to enhance and deepen thinking and learning. His elaborations on the ideas and detailed examples are this exact principle. In Chapter 6, Dual Coding, Kosslyn talks about how important it is to present content in multiple modalities and allow students to organize the information using charts, graphs, mind maps. Throughout the book, Kosslyn also uses flow charts and other graphs to help explain the principles and how teachers might apply them in their online activities and classes to enhance student learning. I thought that this was definitely a strength of the book.
Although primarily practitioner focused, which was a strength, I would have liked to see more research and explanation of the studies behind these principles. Whether it was Kosslyn’s own research or famous examples, I think that having some of these would help to show the strength and validity of these practices. As other researchers like Willingham have noted, teachers sometimes are attracted to fads in education, and they are not always evidence based. Kosslyn talks about flipped classrooms as one example of these ed fads that have not been successful. Kosslyn does talk about some research studies in his book and there are footnotes at the end, but I think having some research or evidence about these practices would have strengthened the book. The other issue with the book is that the audience of teachers was not really clear. It seemed that the book could be for college teachers, but I wondered if there were some principles of adult learning that would have been more applicable to the chapter about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Adults often have different goals and mindsets than adolescents or children, and these factors along with their past learning histories can all impact their ability to learn. Maybe in an expanded edition, there could be some kind of breakout to focus on different levels of learning or explaining how teachers working with students from different developmental ages might apply these concepts in activities and learning. That’s not to say that this was a weakness of the book. The book was concise, well organized, and I really appreciated his ideas and examples of applying the principles. I was getting ideas of different activities that I could adapt to use in my own classes.
I highly recommend this timely book for any teacher. It’s especially good reading over the summer since it is short and focused on practical application. It’s also great because as students return to school, there will still be a reliance on digital technology and e-learning to facilitate students’ learning. Understanding how learning works and finding ways to maximize and improve students’ learning with technology is something that all teachers should be focused on.
Although primarily practitioner focused, which was a strength, I would have liked to see more research and explanation of the studies behind these principles. Whether it was Kosslyn’s own research or famous examples, I think that having some of these would help to show the strength and validity of these practices. As other researchers like Willingham have noted, teachers sometimes are attracted to fads in education, and they are not always evidence based. Kosslyn talks about flipped classrooms as one example of these ed fads that have not been successful. Kosslyn does talk about some research studies in his book and there are footnotes at the end, but I think having some research or evidence about these practices would have strengthened the book. The other issue with the book is that the audience of teachers was not really clear. It seemed that the book could be for college teachers, but I wondered if there were some principles of adult learning that would have been more applicable to the chapter about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Adults often have different goals and mindsets than adolescents or children, and these factors along with their past learning histories can all impact their ability to learn. Maybe in an expanded edition, there could be some kind of breakout to focus on different levels of learning or explaining how teachers working with students from different developmental ages might apply these concepts in activities and learning. That’s not to say that this was a weakness of the book. The book was concise, well organized, and I really appreciated his ideas and examples of applying the principles. I was getting ideas of different activities that I could adapt to use in my own classes.
I highly recommend this timely book for any teacher. It’s especially good reading over the summer since it is short and focused on practical application. It’s also great because as students return to school, there will still be a reliance on digital technology and e-learning to facilitate students’ learning. Understanding how learning works and finding ways to maximize and improve students’ learning with technology is something that all teachers should be focused on.
May 27, 2021
I teach technology integration at a college level to pre-service, but as Stephen Kosslyn reminded us at the beginning of the book, COVID-19 pandemic surely provided us all with an “unplanned experiment in online education”. While the experience itself added another level of difficulty for all teachers, it also emphasized the importance of active learning, especially online. This is the argument that S. Kosslyn makes in his book Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive. He reminds us that regardless of the modality we are using to deliver content to our students, it is the experience of active learning that separates good from bad teaching in both face-to-face and online environments. Otherwise, the “world of possibilities” that new technologies open up for us has the potential to fail our students.
Kosslyn does a really good job defining active learning, laying out all the benefits of active learning, and relying on the science of learning to show how we can make any learning experience (online or face-to-face) fun and engaging for our students. He starts with explaining how the brain works (e.g. memory and learning) and moves on to explain what we as teachers can do (through activities that support deep processing chunking, building associations, dual coding and deliberate practice) to help our students enjoy and succeed in learning. The overview of the science, however, is not too deep, more like a reminder for those who are already familiar or as a primer/starter for those who need to learn more. Each chapter provides concrete practical examples of how to achieve different principles of active learning both face-to-face and online, which are very helpful and often quite innovative. Those examples might be my favorite feature of the book, as I am already very familiar with the science of learning.
Kosslyn does a really good job defining active learning, laying out all the benefits of active learning, and relying on the science of learning to show how we can make any learning experience (online or face-to-face) fun and engaging for our students. He starts with explaining how the brain works (e.g. memory and learning) and moves on to explain what we as teachers can do (through activities that support deep processing chunking, building associations, dual coding and deliberate practice) to help our students enjoy and succeed in learning. The overview of the science, however, is not too deep, more like a reminder for those who are already familiar or as a primer/starter for those who need to learn more. Each chapter provides concrete practical examples of how to achieve different principles of active learning both face-to-face and online, which are very helpful and often quite innovative. Those examples might be my favorite feature of the book, as I am already very familiar with the science of learning.
May 3, 2021
Good information
This book has a lot of good content. I like that the suggested activities are grounded in the science of learning and are explained thoroughly. The rationale for each technique is explained along with step by step instructions.
I found this book to be very useful.
This book has a lot of good content. I like that the suggested activities are grounded in the science of learning and are explained thoroughly. The rationale for each technique is explained along with step by step instructions.
I found this book to be very useful.
January 21, 2021
Good overview of learning science principles. Valuable resources to help instructors improve online classes
October 24, 2021
Nice suggestions and in line with current context
December 25, 2022
Excelente libro
Lo que me gustó del libro es que es muy conciso y tiene información sobre el aprendizaje activo que realmente te puede ayudar a mejorar tus cursos online.
Lo que me gustó del libro es que es muy conciso y tiene información sobre el aprendizaje activo que realmente te puede ayudar a mejorar tus cursos online.
May 5, 2023
Great book for a college faculty read!
June 26, 2023
Good overview of the theory, with ideas on activities and why they work better for learning.
November 4, 2023
Excellent book filled with ideas to make online courses more engaging.
July 10, 2021
Excellent and Brief Overview of Active Learning
Excellent combination of brain science and practical examples for designing online courses. Author provides a wide variety of tools to use in the classroom and online with the rationale behind each approach.
Excellent combination of brain science and practical examples for designing online courses. Author provides a wide variety of tools to use in the classroom and online with the rationale behind each approach.
November 1, 2024
LOVED this book! My husband has been building an online business for a few years, since COVID and has been stuck on the online course component. This book gave all the tips he needed to set up his business to be profitable. Thank you for the advice!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews