The Impact of Active Learning Instructional Techniques on Recreational Therapy Undergraduate Students

Abstract

Over the last several years there has been a call to increase the quality of recreational therapy (RT) education. During this same time active learning has grown in popularity as a way to help increase student comprehension. While the vast majority of this growth has occurred in science, technology, engineering and math courses, no research has been found on the impact active learning can have on RT education. The focus of this study was to determine if utilizing an active learning framework, grounded in constructivist theory, would result in an increase in RT student comprehension. The study population consists of 45 undergraduate students enrolled in RT courses at a Midwestern university. Students were randomly assigned to either (1) active learning or (2) traditional lecture sections of the same undergraduate course that was taught in parallel. Student comprehension (assessed via final grades) was compared between the two sections using independent samples t-test. We found that active learning has a greater impact on increasing student comprehension than traditional lecture. These findings support the need for RT educators to examine active learning as a primary method of instruction.