Summary

This case study explores how Heriot-Watt University is implementing a strategic shift to expand active learning methods and enhance the student learning experience. It examines how the institutional Global Changemaker Curriculum Framework (GCCF) provides a structure and shared focus for refreshed thinking and practical support in embedding active learning within the academic curriculum. The Framework enables the integration of a variety of active learning methods across our five global campuses. The use of key pedagogical touchpoints, such as the new programme approval process, along with annual quality assurance monitoring and review of degree programmes, supports this.

The Framework is used in tandem with other strategic approaches to raise staff awareness and engagement with active learning. The approaches include introductory active learning workshops at key points in the academic calendar, curriculum storyboarding sessions, and practical active learning resources authored by Heriot-Watt staff. All these are designed to help academic staff implement active learning methods in their own teaching practice and understand their numerous benefits. The case study highlights our early approaches to promote sustainable, active learning change through an embedded cross-institutional framework. It also showcases the challenges and outcomes encountered so far and offers practice-oriented insights for educators and institutions considering similar approaches.

About Heriot-Watt University

Heriot-Watt University is a global university with campuses based in Dubai, Edinburgh, Malaysia, Orkney and the Scottish Borders. It is a medium-sized university with approximately 16,000 students based at its five campuses and approximately 8,000 distance learners. A distinctive feature of the educational provision at Heriot-Watt is the globally connected learning experience for students. Practically, this means that irrespective of the geographical location or delivery mode, all campuses adhere to the same policies and procedures, enabling a shared curriculum for the same degree at different campuses. This unified curriculum across campuses supports, rather than deters, the adoption of active learning. Multiple modes of participation – such as anonymous polls, written reflections and the ability to tailor case studies for local contexts further enable our cross-institutional implementation.

The University’s Learning & Teaching Strategy has three key strategic priority areas: curriculum, teaching, and assessment. To operationalise this Strategy, the University has implemented its institutional-wide Global Changemaker Curriculum Framework (GCCF) (Heriot-Watt, n.d.). Launched in 2023, the Framework ensures consistency across campuses, programmes, and modules through offering a shared educational vision.

Heriot-Watt’s Curriculum Framework

The GCCF is a practical tool to support teaching teams to design programmes and modules. It has six interconnected dimensions, which collectively provide a vision for education at Heriot-Watt University (see Table 1). It also offers staff resources such as curriculum storyboards, dimension guides with practical design support, and examples of effective practice. The GCCF is designed to enable staff to reconceptualise what and how students are taught in relation to aims, learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment in the curriculum. This approach provides a structure to empower teaching teams to share, collaborate, and innovate. Furthermore, it also encourages staff to engage with active learning design at key pedagogical touchpoints, such as during the approval stages of new and amended modules and programmes, as well as during the annual review and monitoring stage.

Table 1: The Six Dimensions in the Global Changemaker Curriculum Framework (https://lta.hw.ac.uk/resources/gccf/)

Global Changemaker Curriculum Dimensions
	Learning for Sustainable Development	Dimension 1 Students embrace purposeful, challenge-based learning to connect their studies, their communities, and action for sustainable development.
	Assessment for Learning	Dimension 2 Students engage in authentic assessment, enabling them to apply learning in new contexts and to impact on real-world challenges.
	Discovery and Co-creation	Dimension 3 Students direct their own learning journeys, embrace the co-creation of academic discovery, and develop their own sense of purpose and impact.
	Research, Industry and Community Collaboration	Dimension 4 Students build entrepreneurial capabilities and gain professionally relevant insight, experience and skills.
	Inclusive Global Learning Community	Dimension 5 Students flourish within a supportive and inclusive global learning community, connecting across boundaries and shaping collaborative action for change.
	Resilience, Wellbeing and Compassion	Dimension 6 Students are empowered to become resilient learners, thriving on change and challenge with the skills, commitment and compassion to impact on the world around them.

Inspiring Active Learning

At Heriot-Watt, our approach to securing academic buy-in for active learning within the GCCF emphasises the use of evidence-based approaches. Specifically, this includes active learning approaches that highlight both their effectiveness and practical benefits in the classroom (MacDonald et al., 2024; Zumbrunn et al., 2014). Our starting point was to curate a list of key active learning resources from the peer-reviewed and grey literature. This task involved a collaborative partnership with Learning & Teaching Academy staff and an appointed, paid, six-week student intern (Healey et al., 2014). During the internship, the student critically evaluated the active learning literature and prepared a bibliographic entry for each identified source, while staff guided the process and ensured academic rigour. The resulting annotated bibliography incorporates the intern’s perspectives, making it a more meaningful and inclusive piece of academic work to use in this project. This partnership has been central in helping inspire Heriot-Watt staff to embed active learning in their practice.

Practical Strategies to Implement Active Learning

A three-stage process is underway to embed active learning across Heriot-Watt University. The implementation plan is as follows:

1: Raise Staff Awareness and Buy-in

Successfully embedding active learning requires all staff, regardless of their geographical location, to share a common understanding of its principles, purposes, and benefits (Freeman et al., 2014; Theobald et al., 2020). Without such a shared definition of active learning, staff misconceptions can develop, leading to confusion, a lack of buy-in, or ineffective implementation. Williams et al. (2022) report these issues and challenges with a plea for all educators to build a common understanding of active learning across institutions and disciplines.

At Heriot-Watt, we embraced from the outset Freeman’s definition of active learning:

Active learning engages students in the process of learning through activities and/or discussion in class, as opposed to passively listening to an expert. It emphasizes higher-order thinking and often involves group work. (Freeman et al., 2014, pp. 8413-8414)

This consistent messaging approach is designed so our staff feel supported through all our various communication platforms and channels. These include introductory online active learning sessions during the Get Set Staff Induction Week, School discussions, and digital resources.

At the introductory active learning sessions, the aim is to increase interest in active learning benefits (e.g. outcomes, motivation, student engagement), acknowledge any challenges (e.g. time, class sizes, technology, learning spaces), and offer solutions. The sessions also provide examples of active learning methods from across Heriot-Watt campuses and beyond the institution (see Table 2). There is a diverse range of active learning methods, some of which use technology, while others require little time in class or are more appropriate for small class sizes (Wilkins & Horii, 2018).

These multiple modes of engagement help ensure a diverse range of students can access and participate in ways that align with their needs, helping to ensure an inclusive active learning approach (Freeman et al., 2014; Molloy & Thomson, 2023). Table 2 illustrates the active learning methods showcased in the online introductory active learning session. The affordances of the spinning wheel in the polling software Wooclap emulate effective active learning practice (Hack, 2022).

2: Offer Structured Training to Encourage Experimentation and Reflection

Further opportunities for structured active learning support include:

LEGO^® Serious Play: these Active Learning Series workshops, included within the institutional core CPD offering, introduce the concept of 3D building for teaching and learning. They show how hands-on creative methodologies can enhance critical thinking and collaboration in the classroom. These training sessions can stimulate staff curiosity and create a fun and dynamic learning environment (Nerantzi & James, 2019). Access to centrally available LEGO^® has encouraged staff to experiment in different disciplines to deepen student learning through building, reflecting, and storytelling, helping to account for the diversity of student needs. For example, staff in the Graduate Apprentices Design and Manufacturing modules have used LEGO^® as a tool to enhance student oral presentation performance and increase their communication skills. In contrast, staff in Psychology use this modality to engage widening participation students in conversations around their selected topic of study. The influence of these sessions is evident through staff documenting their LEGO^® experiences on LinkedIn and individual staff reflections on how these teaching changes positively impact their student learning.

The Heriot-Watt Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching & Learning programme (PGCertTL): the programme offers mandatory professional development in active learning theory and practice through its 15-credit module, Global Inclusive Teaching & Learning. In this module, participants design an active learning intervention which is also cognisant of a range of student needs, such as neurodiversity, language barriers etc. Through embedding active learning in this programme, PGCertTL participants are provided with an opportunity to develop their knowledge and skills. This enables them to incorporate active learning and refresh their own teaching practice.

As Williams et al. (2022) report, active learning has the potential to positively impact student learning, but not all educators know about active learning theory or practice or are aware of its benefits. Typically, 40-50 staff undertake this module, providing a large captive audience to inspire. The module offers PGCertTL facilitators first-hand insights into the range of active learning methods embedded across different disciplines and contexts. These include mystery quotation (Parkman, 2022), pair programming and debates. This dual learning process between facilitators and participants helps to strengthen active learning practices, enabling wider dissemination across campuses and Schools.

3: Provide Toolkits and Active Learning Resources

Providing practical curriculum design toolkits, digital resources and case studies is fundamental to help academic staff confidently embed active learning in their teaching practice. Examples of these at Heriot-Watt include:

1. Practical guidance and tips on incorporating a variety of active learning methods in teaching. These include low preparation activities such as Think-Pair-Share and the One-Minute Paper and collaborative activities such as Jigsaw Groups and Case Studies. All are designed to build community and belonging within modules and programmes and are available in Heriot-Watt’s Active Learning: 29 Starter Ideas to Engage Your Students (Heriot-Watt, 2024).
2. A curriculum design storyboard toolkit, which enables teaching teams to visually map out learning experiences and define the key components of a module e.g. learning outcomes, weekly core topics, teaching approaches and active learning activities.

All resources are available from the Learning & Teaching Academy for use across our five campuses. Figure 1 depicts the holistic approach to embedding active learning.

Key Learning and Takeaways

The following key learning points have emerged from our initial implementation of active learning and are included for others seeking to embed an institutional approach to active learning in their own context.

1. Avoid the One-Size-Fits-All Approach

Heriot-Watt offers a diverse range of undergraduate and taught postgraduate degree programmes across the areas of business, design and textiles, engineering, science, and technology. Through delivering staff development sessions, it became apparent that the time available for staff to invest in active learning is variable across class sizes, learning environments, years of study, and disciplines. For smaller institutions or those with limited resources, it is advisable to start small by piloting active learning in a subject area or degree programme to gather feedback and demonstrate its value before scaling.

Key takeaway: Offer staff a range of active learning methods to choose from, allowing them to select approaches that best fit their teaching context. Academic staff often prefer in-house resources over externally prepared materials, as they can be more meaningful, as they reflect teaching in their own institution. Consider developing in-house staff-facing materials such as Heriot-Watt’s Active Learning: 29 Starter Ideas to Engage Your Students (Heriot-Watt, 2024).

2. Invest in Staff Development

Engage academic staff with structured active learning training sessions at key milestones in the academic year for example the annual Heriot-Watt Learning & Teaching Conference.

Key takeaway: Offer staff ongoing professional development to help them effectively implement or expand active learning. The provision of a safe space to exchange active learning ideas with colleagues can often reduce initial staff scepticism or lack of confidence, as illustrated in the following staff remark:

Seeing practical examples of how colleagues have integrated active learning into their courses sparks ideas that can be adapted to your own teaching. Small changes can make a big difference, staff who experiment with their teaching also enthuse students who begin to anticipate, ‘What will they try next?’ This, in turn, enhances student engagement and outcomes.

Associate Professor, School of Engineering & Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University

3. Explain How Active Learning Supports Employability

Active learning requires strong, sustained institutional support, so ensuring a shared understanding of its purpose and value at all levels across campuses, including Directors of Learning & Teaching, Programme Directors, and the Careers Service is critical.

Key takeaway: Use active learning to strengthen its links to employability. Ensure students and staff are both apprised regarding how active learning fosters both real-world skills development and career-readiness, as captured in the following staff comment:

We know from our conversations with our industry partners that the most successful students in the graduate recruitment process, tend to be those who can clearly articulate to employers how their knowledge and skills have already been applied to solve work-based problems.

Head of Careers, Heriot-Watt University

To conclude, a strategic shift to expand active learning activities across the University’s five international campuses takes time. The commitment to this ambition is reflected in Heriot-Watt’s 2035 Strategic Plan timeline, and the planned further research required to fully evaluate the impact and effectiveness of active learning on student outcomes.

References

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Freeman, S., Eddy, S. L., McDonough, M., Smith, M. K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., & Wenderoth, M. P. (2014). Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(23), 8410–8415. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1319030111

Hack, S. (2022). Ready, steady…evaluate: using an online spinner to enliven learning activities. In T. Betts & P. Oprandi (Eds.), 100 Ideas for Active Learning, Open Press University of Sussex. https://doi.org/10.20919/OPXR1032/73

Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. Higher Education Academy. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/engagement-through-partnership-students-partners-learning-and-teaching-higher-education

Heriot-Watt University (2024). Active Learning: 29 Starter Ideas to Engage Your Students https://lta.hw.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/active_learning_LTA_29_activities2024.pdf

Heriot-Watt University (n.d.). Global Changemaker Curriculum Framework. https://lta.hw.ac.uk/resources/gccf/

Parkman, E. (2022). Arguing to learn: challenging a viewpoint with mystery quotations. In T. Betts & P. Oprandi (Eds.), 100 Ideas for Active Learning, Open Press University of Sussex. https://doi.org/10.20919/OPXR1032/37

Perkins, J. (2022). The ‘Diamond Nine’: encouraging student engagement with graduate attributes. In T. Betts & P. Oprandi (Eds.), 100 Ideas for Active Learning, Open Press University of Sussex. https://doi.org/10.20919/OPXR1032/45

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About the authors

Joy Perkins and Clare Thomson are Associate Professors based in the Learning & Teaching Academy at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh Campus. Their research interests focus on learning design, escape rooms, developing students’ employability, and curriculum innovation, championing active learning methods.

Corresponding author: Joy Perkins, joy.perkins@hw.ac.uk