3. Encourages Active Learning
Learning isn’t a spectator sport. Students don’t study much just by sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing pre-packaged assignments, and spitting out answers. They have to speak about what they are learning, write about it, relate it to past experiences and apply it to their daily lives. 
Some examples: active learning is encouraged in classes that use structured exercises, challenging discussions, team projects, and peer critiques. Active learning occurs outside the classroom. Thousands of internships, independent study, and cooperative job programs are across the country in all kinds of colleges and universities, in all kinds of fields, for all kinds of students. Also students may assist d in designing and teaching courses or parts of courses. At the State University of New York at Cortland, beginning students in a general chemistry lab have worked in small groups to design lab procedures rather than repeat restructured exercises. At the Michigan’s University, teams of students periodically work with faculty members on a long-term original research project in the social sciences.
4. Gives Prompt Feedback
Recognizing what you know and don't know focuses learning. Students require suitable feedback on performance to benefit from courses. Getting started, students need help in assessing existing knowledge and competence. Students in classes need frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. During college, and at the end, students need chances to reflect on what they have learned, what they still need to know, and how to assess themselves.
Some examples: No feedback can occur without assessment. Estimation without timely feedback contributes little to learning.
Colleges evaluate entering students as they enter to guide them in planning their studies. Besides, the feedback they receive from course instructors, students in many colleges and universities receive counseling periodically on their progress and future plans. At Bronx College, students with poor academic preparation have been carefully tested and given special tutorials to prepare them to take introductory courses. They are advised about the introductory courses to take, given the level of their academic skills.
Adults can obtain estimation of their work and other life experiences at many colleges and universities through portfolios of their work or through standardized tests; these provide the basis for sessions with advisors.
Some colleges require that students develop high levels of performance in eight general abilities such as analytic and communication skills. Performance is evaluated and then discussed with students at each level in a variety of ways and by a variety of assessors. Writing courses across the country let students learning, through detailed feedback from instructors and fellow students, to revise and rewrite drafts. In the process they learn, that feedback is central to learning and improving performance.
| 
