On degree courses comprising large numbers of students, interaction with academic staff and other students can be compromised. This may leave students feeling isolated and lacking in vital academic support. At Manchester, we have tried to address this issue using active learning sessions, which have been shown to provide many benefits to both students and staff. These sessions have been designed to: • identify areas of poor knowledge • reinforce understanding of concepts introduced in lectures • encourage lateral thinking and problem-solving • provide regular reviews of lecture material and to ‘wrap-up’ a topic • enable students to monitor their progress Furthermore, by monitoring student responses, teaching staff are able to provide real-time feedback to students, as well as assessing their current level of knowledge. The activities can be carried out individually or in teams, and can include a competitive element, therefore encouraging development of teamwork skills. Activities can be adapted for use in either lecture theatres or in small group teaching. Our initial success with this approach was established with dental students, where active learning sessions were incorporated into the delivery of the dental programme. The Manchester Dental Programme utilises a blended approach of problem-based learning (PBL), symposia, laboratory classes and clinical skills sessions. Active sessions were introduced to enable students to apply the knowledge gained in the preceding PBL case to other situations (Grady et al., 2009). Typical activities include drip-feed diagnostics, blunder cases, happy families, journal clubs and ‘information soup,’ where the group size is 8 students. These sessions are timetabled at the end of every two week PBL case and thereby also allow students to assess their understanding of the information covered. The marks obtained in these sessions contribute to the coursework element of the summative assessment. These active sessions can also be adapted for larger group sizes (200-plus). We have introduced these sessions for Year 1 students on the nursing degree programme. Nursing undergraduates enrol with a variety of academic backgrounds and are accustomed to different ways of learning. Those who are lacking a basic knowledge of physiology, or who have spent a long period of time away from study, have particular difficulty in grasping basic concepts and remembering unfamiliar terms. This is not a problem unique to Manchester and has been identified in other nursing degree programmes (Roe et al., 2009). Our weekly programme for these students includes lectures, enquiry-based learning tutorials and an active session. These are designed to cater for different learning styles. Students are expected to have at least read through their lecture notes over the weekend in preparation for an active session the following week. The active sessions are designed to be light-hearted and informal, and include such activities as bingo, happy families and crosswords. These sessions are attended by three to four members of academic staff, giving students the opportunity to ask questions about any aspect of their week’s learning objectives. At the end of each activity, students are encouraged to submit their answers verbally or using keypads. Staff offer feedback as to why an answer is correct or not, or use additional questioning to probe further thought. These activities do require an initial input from staff in their development and subsequent ‘refreshing’ and editing. This requirement can also be met by final year research project students in the Faculty of Life Sciences. These students identify gaps in student knowledge and design activities as part of their educational-based research projects. Our preliminary findings suggest that the activities developed by these students are proving to be successful in engaging students and the learners respond positively and enthusiastically to activities designed by fellow students. Our initial analysis has revealed that these sessions are popular with students (Grady et al., 2009; Sheader et al., 2008). Furthermore, the inclusion of interactive sessions appears to have many benefits to students, including improved student engagement, a reinforcement of their learning, and further opportunities for interaction with academic staff. The benefits to staff include real-time feedback on course content. We have demonstrated how this approach can be adapted to a range of student groups and learning environments.