Active Learning Strategies for Teaching about Religion

What is Active Learning?

In the active learning classroom, the focus is not so much on the teacher's role as it is on the student's own responsibility for their own learning. Active learning involves the whole student in the learning process: body, mind, and soul (heart and hand and head). Active learning makes students do something, helps students to think more deeply about what they are learning and thus seeks to make a deep and lasting impression in the student as a person.

Why Active Learning?

Most people tend to be visual, hands-on type learners and we do not outgrow this as we enter into college level work. Active learning, with its focus on student learning over presentation of material, is being stressed more and more at the college level. How can we more actively involve students with the course content? How can we help them to apply what they are learning and use higher order thinking skills? How can we appeal to a wide variety of learning styles and intellectual strengths that may not readily relate to the "old school" lecture style of presenting material? There is no reason why students must be bored with college classroom presentations. Active learning can excite students about the subject matter, thus getting them that much more personally involved in their own learning process. This means they can get more out of it and it can make a more lasting impression on the student.

Learning is not a passive pursuit. It is not about absorbing information from external sources. It is about processing that information in ways that are meaningful to the student. Students learn best when they are more actively involved in their own learning process. It is what goes on inside the student, not inside the classroom, that really makes an impact. The deepest learning takes place when students are actively thinking and processing course content using not only their minds but also their bodies and senses and, in many cases, their emotions as well. In this way the student's learning is focused not only on gaining knowledge but also on developing skills in applying that knowledge, and, especially in the case where a subject like religion is involved, developing affectively in terms of attitude toward what is being learned.

Why Active Learning in the Context of the Study of Religion?

Teaching about religion and religions has tended to be heavy on lecture, with passive students taking in information presented by a "sage on the stage." Many students may be bored by such a teaching style, quickly lose interest or focus, and thus not fully appreciate the subject matter or how it might relate to their own lives.

This collection of active learning strategies is designed to add some variety to the presentation of material that can easily become a collection of dry facts and foreign terms to memorize. These activities are intended for use at the college level but are also quite suitable for application in secondary education and, in some cases, even in elementary and middle school settings.

Using the Indexes:

The activities in this collection are broken down by religion, cognitive skill (Bloom's Taxonomy), learning style, and multiple intelligences (Howard Gardner). Four indexes have been set up so you may easily select activities that relate to any of these four divisions. The "religions index" contains a master list of all activities, subdivided according to the religions to which they relate. The other three indexes contain links to the same activities but list them according the the cognitive skill, learning style, or intelligence to which they each best relate. Each of these indexes also briefly describes the various cognitive skills, learning styles, and intelligences. In some cases, any given activity may relate to more than one skill, style, or intelligence. As such, these respective index pages may list any number of activities more than once, under several headings. You will be able to return to any one of the index pages and this home page using the navigation bar that appears at the top of every page.

Using the activities:

These activities may be used in the classroom to teach and/or reinforce lessons. Many may also be used as homework or for independent learners (such as home schooled students and distance learners). The activities are identified with a specific religion and one or more learning style, cognitive skill, and intelligence. Each activity description indicates to which of these it relates. The activity descriptions also indicate purpose and possible uses for each activity, including an indication of how many students can work together on a given activity (individual, pairs, groups). Each activity description also includes an estimated time and materials needed for the activity, including relevant web resources when available. These activities may be modified as educators see fit for their own purposes. Although these are designed for use with material relating to the study of religions, many can be used within other disciplines (ideas for alternative uses are suggested for many activities).

Ms. Shulman is an adjunct instructor in religion courses at Northern Virginia Community College. She received a Master of Arts degree in Religious Studies in 1988 from Indiana University (Bloomington) and is completing a certificate program in College Teaching at George Mason University (Fairfax, VA).

This project was produced in fulfillment of a professional development grant from Northern Virginia Community College, copyright: May 2004 by Laura Ellen Shulman