Active Learning or Passive Learning?

In education field, being as teacher, we shud know which learning approach is the best for our student, either 'active' or 'passive' learning. Actually, Im puzzled for what reason I must post for this topic. The main purpose I want to discuss these 2 approaches because since few months ago, there were different point of view between my friend and I regarding about this issue. In fact, I really prefer to have active learners rather than passive. Quite shock for me as we have different opinion when my friend insisted he rather prefer to have passive learners haha. So, before going further, lets examine whats the differences between these two.



Active learning is engaging with the material being learnt. A basic easy to understand definition would probably be that active learning is basically you have to move around to learn things, such as learning with games. Passive is more like, you just hear it and it sticks.



When learning is active, students do most of the work. They used their brains...studying ideas, solving problems, and applying what they learn. Right?? Furthermore, active learning is fast-paced, fun, supportive and personally engaging...such as learning something well through hearing, seeing it, asking questions about it and discussions are common. Students will figure things out by themselves and come up with examples. Im sure you will definetely agree with my definition.



Unfortunately, passive learning techniques are popular, mainly because they seem easier than active learning. However, this is just not true. Passive learning is often repetitious and boring, involving techniques such as reading, hearing what the teacher explains, seldom asking questions and limited or hardly no discussions at all. I already encounter these learners NOT ONLY at tuition class, but also at Secondary school and evening class.



So, as for me, I like to have active students who doesn't feel shy to ask questions because thats the only way of improving learning - by making mistakes haha lol. On the contrary, my friend prefer to have passive learners as he really goes for quiet students who dont simply ask stupid questions. Well, thats true. But if all students are quiet, the class is not running efficiently, no pleasant environment. Imagine there is no open discussion, no question and answer, etc....so damn boring, right?



Nowadays, many college teachers want to move past passive learning to active learning, to find better ways of engaging students in the learning process. But many teachers feel a need for help in imagining what to do, in or out of class, that would constitute a meaningful set of active learning activities.



Im sure you also have different opinion on this....have your say!!!