What is the Active Learning Network?

The Active Learning Network is a global community for revolutionising learning. The network is a collaborative, community-led initiative for academics, educational developers, learning technologists and students, with satellite groups at universities around the world. It is a community that aims to provide a collaborative platform to share ideas, produce openly available resources, showcase active learning projects, pedagogic scholarship/research and international discussions around active learning.

The network’s approach is distinctive because it aims to challenge and disrupt existing paradigms in HE and operates in the spirit of sharing and open education. This provides an antidote to top-down, siloed approaches prevalent in HE and means that those involved in learning and teaching can benefit from reciprocal sharing of practice, rather than having to constantly reinvent the wheel and fight isolated struggles for change in their own institutions.

Since 2017, the network has grown from a small group at one university, to a large-scale network with 363 members, 30 satellite groups (including groups from the UK, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Romania, India, China, and Cambodia), a website with engagement from over 100 countries, 5 annual conferences with a combined 920 attendees, sponsorship from companies such as Sony, Sage, Talis and InteDashboard, the world’s first Global Festival of Active Learning, with 1852 sign-ups, 20 online masterclasses with a combined 1053 attendees, multiple award-winning projects, such as The Padlet Project, which was published as an HEA Case Study (Garnham, Betts & Hole, 2018) and in the Compass Journal of Learning and Teaching (Garnham & Betts, 2018), multiple collaboratively-produced open access books, including 100 Ideas for Active Learning (Active Learning Network, 2022), Disrupting Traditional Pedagogy: Active Learning in Practice (Active Learning Network, 2019) and Innovations in Active Learning in Higher Education (Active Learning Network, 2020).

This sharing of scholarship and innovative learning practices has a huge impact, because all staff and students create bilateral communication channels between the wider network and their local networks where they pass the learning forward.

How can I access more publications from the Active Learning Network and the University of Sussex Library?

The Active Learning Network has a range of open access publications which can be accessed via the books and publications page of the website.

The University of Sussex Library has an open access publishing house called OpenPress at the University of Sussex which operates using the WordPress-based platform PressBooks. Their publications can be accessed via the OpenPress at the University of Sussex website.

A larger selection of open access books from the wider community are available from the PressBooks Directory.

How do I get involved?

If any aspect of this book inspires new ideas or serves as a catalyst for positive changes to your practice, or if you would like to get involved in the network or set up and lead your own local satellite group, please get in touch by sending us an email to activelearningnetwork@gmail.com, contacting @ActiveLearnNTW with the hashtag #activelearningnetwork on Twitter, or by visiting our website at www.activelearningnetwork.com.