Can active collaborative learning improve equality?

Published: 31 October 2019 at 11:15

There is a strong drive across ARU and UK Higher Education to improve equality for students from diverse backgrounds. One priority is the attainment gap, where students from some ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged backgrounds experience worse outcomes than expected.

In partnership with two other UK universities and with funding from the Office for Students, Uwe Richter and Rachel Berkson, Anglia Learning & Teaching, worked on the project, ‘Addressing Barriers’ to improve student equality.

In keeping with ARU’s strategic commitment to active learning, they aimed to scale up adoption of an Active Collaborative Learning approach, Team-Based Learning (TBL). TBL has been demonstrated to improve engagement, participation and outcomes, with particular benefits for low performing students. 

Their paper, published in The IAFOR Research Archive,  presented evidence of improved student outcomes and narrowed gaps for disadvantaged groups of students as part of scaling up TBL across our university. It concluded with an outlook on how active collaborative learning, together with other strategic measures, can improve equality and student success in HE.

Read the article, ‘Can Active Collaborative Learning Improve Equality?’ online. 

Richter, U. and Berkson, R. (2019) Can Active Collaborative Learning Improve Equality? The European Conference on Education 2019 Official Conference Proceedings.