The key elements of active learning are Reading, Reflective Writing, Displaying and Doing. It is essential that instructors utilize these elements in their coursework.
In my coursework, we have readings that provide the student with creative inspiration as well as an in-depth description of the tasks they will later be doing themselves. We then ask the students to reflect on those readings and what they learned from them. Later I show my students examples of professionals in the field completing the task that we are soon going to complete in our projects. Lastly, we work on the projects as a class. This successfully covers all four of those elements.
