What does active processing look like?

Active processing is all about turning on students’ brains while learning — it’s contrasted with passive learning, rote learning or shallow memorization.
Students should understand the learning goal and be able to track their progress towards that goal. Here are a couple examples:

They can even set their own goals in relation to the learning goals.
 

And make a plan to achieve their goals.

And here’s a great resource for assessing research skills. Turned on brains = smarter students!