July 08, 2021
by Jere W. Morehead, President
Initiatives such as experiential learning, entrepreneurship, and data literacy have made the University of Georgia a national leader in undergraduate education. In the coming months, UGA will implement its next curriculum-wide innovation: active learning.
Courses designed around active learning help students think about what they are learning as they are learning it. This approach to teaching provides in-class time for students to engage with course material as they contemplate their level of understanding, construct ideas or products, and interact with other students to make sense of the material. Since 2018, UGA faculty have redesigned 81 courses to integrate active learning techniques, benefiting more than 43,000 students in their own course sections and those taught by other faculty using the redesigned course materials. In addition, UGA has devoted more than $1 million to transforming traditional classrooms into spaces that fully support active learning.
Evidence-based active learning practices will be the focus of UGA’s next Quality Enhancement Plan, a five-year initiative central to the University’s reaccreditation process. In the months ahead, we will institutionalize the use of active learning across academic disciplines and cocurricular areas such as Student Affairs, the UGA Libraries, and the Career Center. Increasing our faculty, staff, and students’ knowledge and skill in active learning will create an even richer learning environment for the UGA community.