They must learn and accept the fact that there are different learning styles and different communication skill levels in the classroom. They will have to realize that students can learn from other students and from their world around them, in addition to the teacher. They will have to understand the changing role of the teacher and the student. In the new educational paradigm, the teacher is the facilitator of self-directed learning that empowers students to follow their own learning paths. Discuss with each other the nature of the concepts and methods being learned.
Distance learning is a natural environment for active learning.
The teacher is, however, responsible for setting up the parameters of the learning experience, forming the discussion groups, deciding on evaluation, and verifying content and quality. How the student pursues the information gathering, acts within the group, or internalizes the necessary information, is left up to the student. We tend to think about active learning and the learning process as limited to educational settings. As life-long learners, we need to consider how we learn outside the classroom. As inquisitive and intelligent adults, we use a variety of learning styles that can be attributed to various learning theories, but often we voluntarily participate in active learning to gain knowledge and insight into our world.