Recommendation 8
Beth Chance (chair), Hollylynne Lee, Amanda Ellis, Anelise Sabbag, Jamie Perrett
Employ evidence-based pedagogies that actively engage students in the learning process.
Studies have shown that students learn more when they are actively involved in the learning process (e.g., Felder and Brent 2024; Lombardi et al. 2021; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2025). Rather than passively receiving information, students can construct their own understandings and connections, reflect on their level of understanding, share their thinking with other students and the instructor, explore new ideas, and test conjectures (Sciences et al. 2018). Learning statistics should happen in an environment where teachers continually put students at the center of the learning experience. Courses in statistics and data science offer many natural opportunities for such engagement, whether using manipulatives to make abstract ideas concrete, asking students to make predictions and then use technology to test their understanding, or having students design and carry out full data collection projects from framing the question to presenting their conclusions.
Every class session can include some opportunities for students to actively engage. These opportunities can be very quick additions to your existing courses and class meetings do not have to be 100% activity-based to achieve active engagement. In fact, interspersing activity-learning with lecture may be beneficial in providing students with variety and reinforcement. Below we offer some strategies and examples of steps you can take. Keep in mind that not all active learning strategies work for all course content or for all students, but a variety of experiences beyond passive lecture can make the course more engaging and meaningful for the students and for you! We are not suggesting that you should never lecture, but try to make those lectures more student-centered and consider placing the lecture after students have experienced some productive struggle with a new concept.
Principles and strategies for adding more active pedagogies to your classroom
Incorporating active engagement in the classroom does not require a complete course redesign. Small, intentional changes—such as interactive discussions, brief in-class activities, or opportunities for reflection—can have a positive impact on student learning and engagement. Even minor adjustments to course materials provided to students (e.g., leaving key words out of a definition to fill in together; allowing time for students to brainstorm an application of a statistics technique; think-pair-share; jigsaw) can enhance understanding and foster a more dynamic, student-centered learning environment (Corbo and Sasaki 2021).
Tailor activities to the students. Active engagement can support learning with all ages of students, from elementary to graduate-level (Sciences et al. 2018). When incorporating active engagement in the classroom, consider the audience of the course. Activities that resonate with an introductory statistics course for nursing students may differ from those suited for business majors, primarily in terms of context and students’ background knowledge and goals for the course. Ask questions purposefully and based on your students’ background knowledge—starting with easier questions to build confidence before progressing to more complex discussions—to encourage deeper thinking and participation. To support learning, provide scaffolding—such as optional videos—and create opportunities for questioning, revision, and further exploration.
Involve as many students as possible. Consider ways of getting more students to share their knowledge. This can range from gently calling on students (with an option to “pass”) to asking students to covertly hold up one, two, or three fingers in response to a multiple choice question, to using online polls or classroom response systems (e.g., Muir et al. 2020). For example, if you have students present to the class, consider requiring other students to ask questions of the presenter; if you only have one computer, consider asking different students to run the software with another student telling them what to do, and a third student commenting on what they did.
Be prepared. Not all class data collection or learn-by-doing activities will be successful, so try to build in contingency plans. For example, consider having data from the previous class handy to supplement what’s collected in class. To help evaluate an activity, work through the activity yourself, playing the role of student, prior to using it in class. After class, jot down notes from your experiences/student comments to suggest improvements for the next iteration.
Embrace the uncertainty. Implementing active engagement can feel uncomfortable for instructors, as it often involves an element of uncertainty in how class discussion will proceed or how a class activity will end (e.g., exactly how data collected in class will turn out). Acknowledging this uncertainty and participating alongside students can foster deeper engagement. Let students know that not having all the answers is part of the learning process and that figuring things out together is a valuable skill.
Consider the important role of student-to-student interaction. Don’t underestimate how much students can learn from each other. Students wrangling over an idea with each other and defending their reasoning can be a powerful learning tool, especially in the absence of an “expert” providing answers. A small step (and good starting point) is assigning students to a small group in class and asking them to submit a single group answer that incorporates everyone’s viewpoint. A larger step could be a long-term out-of-class group project, with periodic check-in points throughout the term. Research has shown that building in a collaborative structure, with individual accountability and positive interdependence, can be key to achieving effective and enriching learning opportunities (e.g, Cohen and Lotan 2014; Johnson and Johnson 2009). It is also important to have clear guidelines to encourage positive and respectful interactions (e.g. make/take space, listen to each other, use “I” statements). For longer collaborations, provide students with opportunities to evaluate each other; this allows instructors to identify any group challenges early and support students in overcoming difficulties effectively.
Be sensitive to students’ personal situations. Whether it is collecting data on students or asking students to work in groups, active engagement can feel uncomfortable for some. Student engagement often increases when examining data on themselves, but be sure to collect data anonymously and even consider whether some demographic questions are truly necessary. Group work can be successful when the instructor supports students as they interact with each other, e.g., discussing the purpose of active engagement, setting clear expectations, and fostering open conversations about goals (Johnson and Johnson 2009). Additionally, consider effective group dynamics and find ways to better support the needs of all students (c.f., Felder and Brent 2024; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2025). But even with a very good and supportive structure, not all students may feel comfortable participating in group activities or presenting in front of the class, so consider alternative ways for them to engage or provide mechanisms for a student to opt out of certain activities (Gin et al. 2020).
Be a proactive facilitator of learning. When students are engaging with each other and doing something active, the role of the instructor changes to monitoring and intervening if/when needed. If you give students time to work on a longer activity, be visible around the room, stop, listen, and ask students questions, but encourage them to ask each other questions before asking you. Consider putting “stop signs” in the middle of an activity requiring them to check in with you before proceeding. Try to give yourself time to debrief an activity at the end of class or at the beginning of the next class period and/or ask students to share their reflections in a discussion board. See your role as facilitator of learning rather than provider of all knowledge (Morrison 2014).
An activity can accomplish the same learning goals in a similar amount of time as a lecture. Instructors often think they don’t have time to add a non-lecture component to their class; but consider replacing a lecture-based portion of class or instructor-led demonstration with a student-led exploration or a student-collected dataset (Lombardi et al. 2021). You can also consider moving some of the “background” reading/review to outside of class (e.g., pre-lab, reading and videos) to help students prepare for getting the most out of time together in class, this is sometimes referred to a “flipped” classroom (Farmus, Cribbie, and Rotondi 2020). Also have conversations with the students about the instructional purpose of an activity and encourage thoughtful reflection on the connections to the associated learning goals.
Give students choice and ownership. You probably can’t go as far as involving students in selecting course topics or having a student’s question determine the content discussed that day, but you can look for ways to provide students’ choice and ownership (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten 2014). For example, when using a large multivariate dataset, allow students the choice of which quantitative variables they want to explore relationships among when learning about correlation and least squares regression. For a final project, you can allow students to choose the research question and design the data collection plan they will carry out. On an exam, you can give them a choice of datasets with the same analysis goals or a choice of exam questions of similar difficulty.
Engaging learners can also occur in online environments. Opportunities for students to construct their own knowledge as well as to interact with each other and work collaboratively can enhance the learning process in online courses as well (e.g, Everson and Garfield 2008; Mills and Raju 2011). Even in an asynchronous setting, techniques such as Collaborative Keys (e.g., Sabbag et al. 2025) and Discussion Forums (e.g., Lima et al. 2019) can incorporate key elements of cooperative learning. For example, well-designed discussion board prompts (e.g., critiquing an article) and requiring students to respond to other posts (e.g., code review) or asking students to use voice and video tools to engage with each other, can build a sense of community among students and the instructor. You can also enhance engagement with online material by asking specific questions related to content at different timestamps instead of having students passively watch a video.
Additional Resources
Annotated bibliography
Examples
Assessments