Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, TX has implemented a cohort-based professional development program called the Active Learning Academy. This multi-disciplinary academy brings faculty together from across the college to discuss and practice integrative and interactive teaching strategies which increase student engagement and promote the development of 21st Century skills.

- Explore active learning strategies while participating in this dynamic and interactive presentation - Learn about the theoretical underpinning and research on integrative learning in the classroom and student success - Learn about the Active Learning Academy structure and hear success stories for classroom implementation

The evidence that active learning approaches help students learn more effectively than transmissionist approaches in which instructors rely on “teaching by telling” is robust and stretches back more than thirty years (e.g., Bonwell and Eison, 1991). Since then, there has been an abundance of research published that supports the notion that active learning pedagogy increases student success (Freeman et al., 2014; Brooks and Solheim, 2014). Founded on this compelling theoretical underpinning, Tarrant County College in Fort Worth, TX has implemented a cohort-based professional development program called the Active Learning Academy. Through regular academy sessions and classroom observations, faculty in this learning community gain valuable knowledge and experience to enhance their instruction. This program was recently adopted by the college as the signature professional development program for faculty and has been scaled-up to bring the opportunity to each of the college's six campuses.