Sometimes referred to as “active learning” or “generative learning,” this principle suggests that students learn better when they participate in a generative learning activity, such as summarizing, mapping, drawing, imagining, self-testing, self-explaining, teaching, or enacting. Any activity that encourages students to engage in cognitive processes that are necessary for learning would be considered “active learning.” For example, selecting the most important ideas, mentally organizing them into a coherent structure, and integrating it with relevant prior knowledge activated from long-term memory would be an activity that supports students’ generative learning.
Using the Generative Activity Principle
Build in time in your lessons for students to be active participants in their learning and to generate some demonstration of their understanding. Minimize lecturing and passive learning and instead devote class time to structured activities in which students build a representation of their knowledge. This can be as simple as explaining what they just learned to a partner, or more complex like drawing the relationship between what they just learned and concepts they have previously mastered. Students don’t have to be elaborate, but evidence suggests that generative learning activities are more effective when there are some scaffolds in place supporting the students’ process and when the load imposed by the activity is minimized.
Generative Activity Principle in the OpenStax Algebra 1 Curriculum
This Algebra 1 curriculum is built upon constructivist principles, and is therefore full of generative learning activities! Most of the lesson activities will require students to actively process and demonstrate their understanding, often in partners or groups. The curriculum also includes a number of graphic organizers that can help scaffold this process for your students for a number of important concepts.
References
Mayer, R. E. (2020). Multimedia learning (Third edition). Cambridge University Press.
Fiorella & Mayer (2015) Learning as a Generative Activity: Eight learning strategies that promote understanding New York: Cambridge University Press