Moving Beyond Activity: What Actually Makes Learning Stick?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUusuw-xdr4

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what actually makes learning meaningful—not just engaging, but something that truly sticks. It’s easy to assume that if we make learning more interactive, we’ve improved it, but the reality is a little more complex than that.

Research shows that simply adding active learning strategies does not guarantee improved outcomes. In fact, Andrews et al. (2011) found that active learning alone, without intentional design and alignment, does not significantly impact student learning. That really forced me to rethink what it actually means to create meaningful learning experiences not just for students, but for educators as well.

So, What’s Missing?

It’s not about adding activities: it’s about designing the entire learning experience differently.

When I think back to the ideas from A New Culture of Learning and the work we did in EDLD 5313, the shift becomes clearer. Learning isn’t something that happens through information delivery or isolated activities. It happens through:

• Exploration

• Collaboration

• Real-world application

• Ongoing reflection

That aligns closely with what we see in the OCSB case study. Their model didn’t just add collaboration; they restructured professional learning around it. Instead of bringing in a speaker for a one-time session, they redirected funding to give teachers time to work together, plan, and implement in real contexts.

That’s a completely different mindset.

Collaboration: More Than Just Working Together

Something that stood out to me in both the readings and the video is that collaboration for the sake of collaboration doesn’t work.

We’ve all been in those meetings, grouped together, told to “collaborate,” but without a clear purpose or structure. It feels productive at the moment but doesn’t lead to real change.

Effective collaboration requires:

• A clear, shared goal

• Relevance to actual classroom challenges

• Time to implement and reflect

• Support during the process

Goodwin (2015) reinforces this idea, noting that collaboration only leads to growth when it is purposeful and focused on improving practice.

In the OCSB model, collaboration works because it is:

• Job-embedded

• Teacher-driven

• Focused on real classroom needs

Teachers aren’t just talking, they are designing, testing, and refining their practice together.

Creating a Culture of Learning (Not Just PD)

Another powerful shift in the OCSB video is the emphasis on learning over training.

There’s a moment in the transcript where educators talk about driving their own learning based on student needs, rather than waiting to be told what to learn. That’s a huge mindset change.

Instead of:

“What professional development do I have to attend?”

It becomes:

“What do my students need, and what do I need to learn to support that?”

That’s the kind of culture I want to build into my innovation plan.

What This Means for My Innovation Plan

This discussion really pushed me to think more intentionally about how I design professional learning within STEP.

It’s not enough to:

• Include collaboration

• Add interactive components

• Provide resources

Those things only matter if they are part of a larger, intentional system.

Moving forward, I want to ensure that STEP:

• Builds in structured, job-embedded collaboration

• Allows educators to drive their learning based on real challenges

• Provides time and support for implementation

• Focuses on learning as an ongoing process, not an event

Because that’s where the real impact happens.

Final Reflection

This week reinforced something important for me:

Learning doesn’t improve because we add more to it. It improves when we design it differently from the start.

And if we truly want innovation to stick, whether in classrooms or professional learning, it has to be meaningful, supported, and grounded in real practice.

References

Andrews, T. M., Leonard, M. J., Colgrove, C. A., & Kalinowski, S. T. (2011). Active learning not associated with student learning in a random sample of college biology courses. CBE— Life Sciences Education, 10(4), 394–405. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.11-07-0061

Goodwin, B. (2015). Does teacher collaboration promote teacher growth? Educational Leadership, 73(4), 82–83.