What Is Interactive Learning?

The biggest asset of the human race is our ability to transfer knowledge and experience through learning. This means that the knowledge acquired by our predecessors never really gets lost. First schools are as old as civilization, but the very concept of learning is probably as old as the human (and even proto-human) race. With the development of technology (from oral traditions, writing, and various forms of recording), learning tools got more sophisticated, as well.

Today, we live in a hyperconnected world where we have all the knowledge of the collective online community at our fingertips. However, we now face challenges unlike ever before. The complacency that comes with the high standard of living makes it quite difficult for a learner to be motivated. Second, the pace at which one needs to acquire knowledge needs to be faster, seeing as how we live faster than ever before.

The solution to both of these problems lies in the concept of interactive learning. Here’s what you need to know about it.

What Is Interactive Learning?

Interactive learning is a didactic process that heavily relies on the use of technology. This allows the student to directly interact with the learning material (hence the name), altering it in the process. This learning method has really exploded over the last couple of decades, seeing as how the technological progress and availability of it made such an educational revolution possible.

Make no mistake, interactive learning is possible even without technology. Student-to-student and teacher-to-student interactions are also a form of interactive learning. The biggest difference lies in the fact that there were never enough teachers to distribute their attention equally, and entrusting students (in student-to-student) interactions is unreliable without proper supervision.

Technology, however, resolves these problems quite efficiently. With the use of present-day technology, misconception checks, answer checks, and right answer checkups can be provided instantaneously. This is what makes interactive education concepts far more acceptable than they ever were before.

The method itself often depends on the circumstances. However, what they all have in common is the fact that they need the input of every single party. This makes it harder to doze off and a lot easier for the learning material to keep the attention of the learners.

Higher Immersion= Higher Motivation

One of the biggest complaints about traditional learning models is that they’re too boring, repetitive, or non-immersive. Learning materials are dry and hard to intellectually digest, which means that the learner quickly gets disconnected from the subject thought. This is why the things you’re learning have a hard time sticking. Interactive learning makes the learning more immersive, which helps keep your spirits high.

This leads to a completely new challenge — the difficulty of measuring studying time. Sure, you’re listening to a 3-hours-long lecture, or you’ve just spent 6 hours gazing at the page of the book. However, how much active learning goes into these hours of spent time? This is an answer that’s nearly impossible to give, and the best you can do is make a crude estimate.

With interactive learning, on the other hand, the process is not progressing without your effort. This means that, unless you’re participating in the process, the time is standing still. Therefore, you get a 1:1 ratio of attendance to active work.

Higher Time-efficiency of the Learning Process

Both in the classroom and via the use of technology, this method is simply more time-efficient. Why? Well, in order to understand this, it’s important that you consider, for a second, what constitutes an end of a successful learning process? The most widely accepted definition would be your ability to implement what you’ve learned in practice.

This is what puts interactive learning head and shoulders above the old-school methods. Namely, interactive learning teaches you to apply your methods as you go. If you give an answer to an interactive platform, you’ll get an answer right away. Chances are, you won’t be able to progress to the next level without giving the right answer to the question.

If you’re working in pairs, you will get your ideas pressure tested. You and your partner will take opposite sides, and by playing a Devil’s advocate, they’ll try their hardest to find the counterarguments. When brainstorming, the flaws of your idea will be rapidly pointed out by everyone in the group.

In other words, flaws are much easier to reveal, and misconceptions are checked a lot easier. For a teacher, it’s sometimes hard to see the bottleneck that the students are facing. This way, you get the feedback far more efficiently, and upon resolving the problem, you get it sorted out right away.

More Entertaining Model

Kids learn through play, which is a concept that people often forget. However, the fact that adults learn the best this way seems to be suppressed in modern discourse, as well. This helps with the efficiency but also the motivation. For instance, things like:

• Crossword puzzle
• Scrabble
• Bingo
• Who am I?
• Debate

They can all be seen as formats of interactive learning. Gamifying your learning experience is always a good idea, seeing as how it helps you get the concept of reward (through earning points) a lot closer to you.

Just think about it this way — what’s the reward of acquiring a skill? Usually, it enriches your intellectual arsenal. However, this concept is too abstract for a lot of people to be seen as valid (or reliable, to be more exact). The reward of getting the job you want, understanding another language, and opening up new opportunities are much more viable. Still, it might be too far down the line. It will take you years to get a degree, months to finish a course, and weeks to improve a single skill. So, how do you make it this far?

With interactive learning, you’re actually getting small victories, points, etc. on a regular basis. By gamifying this experience, you’re turning the learning itself into a reward (like it was always meant to be).

In Conclusion

In the end, the concept of interactive learning is always a good idea. By turning a student into a mere recipient, you have no way of knowing if they’re actually listening (staying focused) or not. Instead, you need to find a way to engage them in the discourse and the best way to do so is through interactive learning.

Remember, interactivity, on its own, is merely a method, and it’s up to you to get the most out of it. In any way, interactive learning makes it easier to stay motivated, adopt knowledge, and keep track of your progress. It’s also more reliant and requires less teacher oversight (or no teacher oversight whatsoever). All in all, it’s definitely shaping up to be a predominant learning method of the 21st century.