Other active-learning courses administer frequent quizzes that oblige students to retrieve knowledge from memory rather than passively read it over in a textbook. Such quizzes have been shown to improve retention of factual material among all kinds of students.

At the University of Texas at Austin, the psychology professors James W. Pennebaker and Samuel D. Gosling instituted a low-stakes quiz at the start of each meeting of their introductory psychology course. Compared with students who took the same course in a more traditional format, the quizzed students attended class more often and achieved higher test scores; the intervention also reduced by 50 percent the achievement gap between more affluent and less affluent students.

Minority, low-income, and first-generation students face another barrier in traditional lecture courses: a high-pressure atmosphere that may discourage them from volunteering to answer questions, or impair their performance if they are called on. Research in psychology has found that academic performance is enhanced by a sense of belonging — a feeling that students from these groups often acutely lack.

Such obstacles also confront female students enrolled in math and science courses; a 2014 study found that although women made up 60 percent of large introductory biology courses, they accounted for less than 40 percent of those responding to instructors’ questions.

The act of putting one’s own thoughts into words and communicating them to others, research has shown, is a powerful contributor to learning. Active-learning courses regularly provide opportunities for students to talk and debate with one another in a collaborative, low-pressure environment.

In a study to be published later this year, researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Yale University compare a course in physical chemistry taught in traditional lecture style to the same course taught in a “flipped” format, in which lectures were moved online and more time was devoted to in-class problem-solving activities. Exam performance over all was nearly 12 percent higher in the flipped class. Female students were among those who benefited the most, allowing them to perform at almost the same level as their male peers.

Given that active-learning approaches benefit all students, but especially those who are female, minority, low-income and first-generation, shouldn’t all universities be teaching this way?