The Chronicle of Higher Education has published a piece by Professor of History Mark C. Carnes, on the "Reacting to the Past" (RTTP) program. In the article "Setting Students' Minds on Fire," Prof. Carnes states that "active learning is one of those academic buzzwords whose meaning has been dulled from overuse. (Some professors even regard taking notes as active learning.) But research shows that the strongest gains come from pedagogies that feature teamwork and problem solving."
The RTTP consortium, a group of 40 colleges and universities that have developed the RTTP pedagogy, invites other institutions to join them. RTTP consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills.
Pioneered in the late 1990s by Prof. Carnes, RTTP has undergone considerable development and expansion. In addition to the eight games currently published by Pearson Education, another twelve games are being developed by teams of faculty from across the nation.