- We often use the words active, constructive and interactive interchangeably but defining them clearly could help us develop a better understanding and framework for learning. - Only constructive is defined properly in the literature - as meaningful learning where learners actively build a mental model of the system they are learning - The author categorises activities into these three terms based on overt externally observable factors that can be manipulated by the instructor or designer of the environment. - Being Active - Learners are doing something. For example, copying using this definition can be considered active, though it is typically considered passive. Rehearsing or memorisation is also considered as active by this definition. - Underlying Process - Encode, store, search or assimilate knowledge - Being Constructive - Learners are producing some additional output that goes beyond the information given. For example, underlining can be considered active but not a constructive activity, since underlines are part of the original information given. On the contrary, explaining something can be considered constructive, since articulating and elaborating is not something explicitly in the information. - Keep in mind that in this case nonsense explanations would be considered active, not constructive. This means that to make the distinction, we must analyse the content the learner is generating as well, not just the activity. - We can make activities constructive by directly prompting self explanation, making text sparse and asking learners to fill the blanks etc. - Underlying Process - Infer insights, draw conclusions, connect information - Being Interactive - Learners are 'dialoguing' or interacting with another person. There may be other ways to interact, but this is a useful starting point. For example, two students may jointly build a lego mode. Students may be responding to an animated agent or tutor. Keep in mind that it is only interactive if the participants are actually contributing meaningfully. Interaction can sometimes be thought of as co-construction. - Eliciting dialogue is not easy. Some studies have done it by giving sentence openers. - Underlying Process - Similar to constructive process - The claim made by this paper is that Interactive > Constructive > Active - Dialogue patterns are not always intuitive, so sometimes it feels like constructive and interactive are equivalent. - The paper goes on to examine studies to establish the claim above. It selects studies that looked activity pairs to support its hypothesis. For example, it looked at a study where learners actively took notes vs did not. - It also looks at two activities of the same category and sees if the learning outcomes are similar in the two cases. ---- Chi, Michelene TH. "Active‐constructive‐interactive: A conceptual framework for differentiating learning activities." _Topics in cognitive science_ 1.1 (2009): 73-105. - [Link](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2008.01005.x)