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3. See Young Adults as Individuals

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5. Be Authentic and Transparent

4. Focus on Active Learning

Active learning treats young adults as doers and decision-makers, not passive recipients of information. It emphasizes hands-on practice, reflection, and real-world application. When participants can try, iterate, and demonstrate their skills, confidence grows—and so does skill.

Jump to: Takeaways

Who is this play for?

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Organizational Leaders

Direct-support Staff

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Young Adult Employers

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Active learning approaches engage participants in learning by doing—solving real problems, practicing skills, discussing and reflecting, creating, and receiving feedback—rather than relying primarily on lectures or reading.

Research shows that Opportunity Youth are looking for opportunities to explore meaningful and engaging content in hands-on applied settings.

Many have experienced adverse outcomes in traditional classroom environments and are seeking alternative learning opportunities. Past focus groups with OY have also found that youth and young adults self-report learning best through hands-on skill-building opportunities in work-based learning and apprenticeships.

What follows are some ways that you can start to think about integrating active learning in your programs.

Why this
matters:

Engagement deepens learning

People retain more by doing, not just listening.

Multiple learning styles are supported

Practice and reflection meet diverse needs.

Confidence grows through mastery

Visible progress builds motivation and persistence.

Leadership

emerges

Young adults step into teaching, presenting, and co-designing.

Workplace relevance goes up

Real tasks translate to real jobs and schooling.

Put it into action

Start small

A major challenge many face when integrating active learning into existing programs is starting too big, too fast. Active learning activities can be built in from the first day of a program, but it’s important to recognize that this may be the first time some of your participants have tried active learning.

Like learning any new skill (or exercise), start with a small activity. Breaking participants into small discussion groups is a great way to turn more traditional lecturing into active learning. Just be sure there is an output from any discussion (a summary of the discussion, questions, or a scenario where they can apply what they just learned).

As a general rule, if your instructions take more than a minute or two to explain, the activity is too complex (especially at the start of a program).

Provide guidance, especially at

the start

Provide prompts and instructions to help participants understand how to engage in active learning. It's easy to assume people have specific skills and experiences — but doing so doesn't treat them as individuals. It can also set them up for failures that may cause them to disconnect.

This could be done by providing worksheets for them to work through or by modeling. Make sure there’s also time to ask questions and check in to see how things are going.

One great way to assist with this is to assign moderator, time keeper, and note taker roles for each group. We recommend having staff assign those roles at first. Again, be sure to provide clear expectations and guidance for them.

Edutopia’s facilitation and discussion protocols contain a number of pragmatic how-tos to build off of: https://www.edutopia.org.

Make sure there

is enough time built in

Active learning activities take time to do well. There needs to be time for:

Explanations and instructions
Small group activities
Group discussion and debrief
Next steps

Schedule out how long you think each thing will take. Again, if you are planning on a small activity and think you may have to spend 10 minutes introducing it and answering questions, then you are probably trying something too complex too quickly.

Here’s a good template to start planning with:
5 min setup → 15–25 min activity → 10 min debrief → 5 min next-step plan.

Include group shareouts whenever you can

Group shareouts helps get participants used to both sythesizing information and communicating it to others. Those are critical skills for people to develop in order to be successful in all aspects of their lives.

Having preassigned roles that rotate can give everyone a chance to do this. In some cases this is the job of the notetaker. You can also have a separate “speaker” role.

Be sure to build time into the activity for the group to collaboratively design what they want to share out.

And, again, early on provide guidelines for crafting a shareout.

Create a safe and supportive learning environment

Name ground rules up front, normalize mistakes, allow “pass” options, and avoid forced disclosure. This helps support a trauma-informed approach.

In particular, work to help everyone reframe “mistakes” as opportunities for learning. This is a place where practicing strengths and asset-based language is critical.

Build Through Hands-On Experience

Design short, real-world projects tied to participant interests—e.g., a pop-up community event, a micro-business pitch, a digital storytelling piece, or a neighborhood data walk. Frame each project with a simple rubric, clear roles, and a public “show the work” moment.

The goal is to let participants apply skills, make decisions, and see tangible results, even on a small scale.

To structure projects, borrow formats from project-based learning: define an authentic task, draft guiding questions, set checkpoints, and end with a public product. PBLWorks offers great templates of active learning projects that can be adapted for OY https://www.pblworks.org/.

Make peer-to-peer learning a core feature, not a bonus

Peers are influential teachers. Build rotating “skill shares” where participants lead 10-minute mini-lessons (e.g., spreadsheet shortcuts, interviewing basics, safe lifting).

Follow with a demo or a quick exercise to ensure everyone practices. This style validates lived expertise, strengthens team bonds, and increases the number of practice reps each person receives.

To keep peer learning equitable, provide simple planning templates (objectives, materials, steps, and check-for-understanding) and brief coaching before each session.

Do not wait until the end of this program to have participants begin this work. Here are examples of simple ways to start documenting progress for portfolios:

Reflection sheets about what they learned through an activity (or class) and how they might use it.

Recording questions they have at the beginning of a program or module. They can then revisit those questions later.
Save examples of works in progress (first drafts or early exercises).
Making sure that for every major activity, people record 3 bullets:
- what they did,
- the tools they used,
- the result, what they learned, and the next step

Time to work on this should be built into every class, and the results should be saved in a safe location for future use (like a Google Document or on Drive). At the end of the program build in time for participants to use those materials to create a portfolio presentation or build them into a resume.

Takeaways:

Opportunity Youth are looking for active learning opportunities. These approaches have been shown to improve retention in programs and jobs.
There are opportunities to work active learning into every lesson.
Always start small and ensure that you are providing enough guidance and time for OY to be successful from the start.
Find ways to incorporate peer-to-peer learning into activities.
Turn documenting personal progress into an active learning project and use that work to help participants create portfolios of what they learned.

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