**1.2. Problem-based learning**

experiences makes students' acquisition of knowledge and competencies more efficient, effective, and appealing. One of the most useful methods of ensuring that students are actively engaged in learning experiences is cooperative learning. In addition, it is the foundation on which many of the active learning and student engagement procedures are built. First, we will explain the relationship between cooperative learning and active learning and student

The first requirement for designing a learning experience is to ensure students are active rather than passive. Passive to active is a continuum, as no learning experience is entirely passive (even sleep has active components) or entirely active. The question is the degree to which a learning experience is structured to make students passive or active. Near the passive end of the continuum, learning is typically listening to the instructor or individually reading information with or without taking notes and highlighting key passages. Characteristics of passive learning are that the student is silent, isolated (working separately from others), and under the direction of others. Near the active end of the continuum, learning occurs when students construct, discover, and transform their own knowledge. Active learning requires students to engage meaningfully cognitively and emotionally with other students, the task assigned, and the materials or resources used to complete the task. Characteristics of active learning are that students are talking with others (i.e., engaged in dialogs), interacting with others (i.e., member of a pair, triad, or group of four), generating new ideas and cognitive structures (discovering their own insights and meaning from the learning activities), and determining their own direction (i.e., coordinating with groupmates as to the direction and speed of the work). Active learning typically requires students working in pairs or small group to conceptualize, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate during discussions the information, procedures, strategies, and conceptual frameworks being learned.

Active learning subsumes students engaging intellectually and emotionally in the learning activities. The continuum of student engagement (both intellectually and emotionally) has disengagement at one end and engagement at the other. Student *disengagement* is defined as off-task behaviors, negative emotions, and the absence of focus, interest, effort, curiosity, persistence, the use of cognitive strategies, and other indicators of learning. Student *engagement* is students' exerting effort to complete the learning task, reflecting interest in completing the task successfully, focus on the task, curiosity about the task and its content, persistence, and the use of cognitive strategies. Engagement may be differentiated into three types: behavioral engagement (attending class, doing homework), cognitive engagement (effort to understand information and master complex skills), and emotional engagement (positive reactions to

Well-designed lessons require students to be active and engaged. These two aspects of lessons overlap, so that often if you get one, you get the other. The easiest way to ensure that students are active and engaged in learning may be to use cooperative learning. In addition, many of the forms of active learning being implemented in schools and universities are based on the foundation of cooperative learning. Some of the most common are discussed below. This is

classmates, academic task and materials, teachers, and so forth).

by no means an exhaustive list.

engagement. Second, we will explain the nature of cooperative learning.

**1.1. Active learning and student engagement**

60 Active Learning - Beyond the Future

*Problem-based learning* may be defined as assigning students to small groups and giving the groups a problem to understand and solve, with the goal of having students learn relevant information and procedures [2–4]. While students work in small groups the instructor facilitates and guides their work. Problem-based learning requires students to work in small groups to ensure that the relevant information and procedures are discovered and mastered by all members of the group, thus making cooperative learning the foundation on which problem-based learning is built. When this connection between cooperative learning and problem-based learning is explicit, it is known as Cooperative Problem-Based Learning or Problem-Based Cooperative Learning.
