Students in active classrooms reported lower feeling of learning than students in passive lectures (0.56 SD lower, P < 0.001)¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r3 · q3 · i2 medium
Currency · newest study 2019 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i2 Students in active classrooms reported feeling of learning more than half an SD (0.56) lower than students in passive lectures (P < 0.001). → Deslauriers L. 2019

Evidence¶

Deslauriers L. 2019¶

Deslauriers L., McCarty L. S., Miller K., Callaghan K., Kestin G. (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821936116

q3 · randomized crossover experiment · i2 · medium effect, β = −0.56 (0.56 SD lower feeling of learning, p < .001) · causal · r3

Fixed-effects regression (model 1) predicting composite feeling-of-learning z scores in the same randomized crossover experiment (149 students). Students in active classrooms reported "more than half an SD (0.56) lower FOL compared with those in passive lectures"; the outcome is a z score, so 0.56 is a standardized difference (coded i2, medium).

"The students in active classrooms reported more than half an SD (0.56) lower FOL compared with those in passive lectures."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Will learners recognise that they learn more from in-class activities than from a fluent lecture? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 5 narrower claims that bear on it: 5 distinct studies (3 causal, 1 theoretical, 1 design), q2–q3, 1 of 5 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Discussion promotes more active thinking than lecture, though lecture is no worse for transmitting information — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• Active Learning Higher Test Scores Than Lecture
• Perceived instructor fluency, not instruction type, predicted students' feeling of learning (0.51 SD, P < 0.001) — related
• Interviewed students described active classrooms as disjointed and frustrating and preferred the fluent passive lecture — related
• Students in active learning environments learned more but felt they learned less, mistaking mental effort for failure — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Classroom observations in an affluent district found most teachers did not use deeper-learning strategies, with students passively listening to lectures — related
• Effortful, fluent-feeling experiences can create an illusion of learning: felt sense of learning is a poor gauge of actual learning — a broader claim this one bears on