Active learning strategies for hei sustainability: a characterization

Higher Education has been facing several challenges in the last decades. The increase in the number of students, the evolution of technology, globalization, budget restrictions, among others, have been influencing how Higher Education Institutions fulfil their mission and stressing the importance of sustainability. Sustainability is not restricted to resource consumption and use, including also the educational process. Adequate, active, learning strategies have the potential to contribute to the teaching-learning process sustainability, developing the sense of responsibility, the need to respect and be respected, the effort to discuss and get to the best collective decision and the development of the students’ agency. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper focuses on the analysis of the contribution of active learning strategies on the sustainability of organizations, on how active pedagogical approaches can benefit the development of the students’ knowledge. The objective of this work is to identify active pedagogical methodologies and to categorize their use in higher education. In addition, it also aims to recognize their benefits, application contexts and the factors for their effective implementation. Five main databases and index services were used, namely, Scopus, Web of Science, IEEExplore, ACM Digital Library, and Google Scholar, searching for the terms “higher education", “active methodologies” and “active strategies”, from the last 10 years. A total of 139 were retrieved in the initial search. After eliminating repeated, inacceptable and out of scope papers, a total of 48 remained, which were subjected to content analysis. The papers were categorized and analysed, with a final summarization and triangulation to extract the results. From content analysis, a set of categories and sub-categories emerged, including the description of the authors’ concept of the active strategy, the students’ assessment, learning technologies and tools, and the learning outcomes. Most papers are consensual mentioning that active learning stimulates the student to critically think about what he is learning or what he is doing. The most frequent pedagogical methodology reveals a trend around collaborative learning and problem-based learning, with significant mentions of game-based learning, storytelling, participatory action research and other techniques. However, most authors also mention that there is a set of significant challenges in the implementation of the active learning strategies in the organization. Institutional support, professional development, curricula design and the use of supporting technologies are frequently mentioned. Sustainability is a concern that is seldom explicitly mentioned, although the authors reveal that using active technologies contribute to organize the students’ study time and their attitude regarding their role in the learning process. Overall, the contribution of the pedagogical methodologies for the sustainability of HEI has to be carefully planned, in articulation with all the actors, and that can contribute to reimagine the organization as a whole.