Activity Information

Have students depict the relationship between ideas 

Use games to build a first-hand understanding of course material

Create more engaging lectures without sacrificing content

Force students to confront different perspectives using a debate

Get students thinking quickly with in-class writing

Build scholarly skills by having students present

Maximize content covered in class by dividing up material

Increase participation by letting students discuss with a partner

Get students focused right at the start of class with an activity
Stimulate thinking with whole-class or group discussion
Extend learning through research projects and activities

Other considerations when choosing an activity:
*Text courtesy of John Girash and the Bok Center

Timeline How long will the activity span?  Are the skills and knowledge you aim to foster with active learning at the core of your course, or are they more lesson-specific?  Let that determine how large a timescale to build around.  But if this is all new to you or your students, feel free to start small and grow from there.
Activity Type What activity will the students do?  Open-ended activities such as games and debates are good for getting students to appreciate subtleties in complex topics or have multiple viewpoints from which they can be examined.  More integrative choices such as concept maps and presentations help students see or construct a cohesive framework for broad topics, especially those that draw on multiple fundamental principles.  As always, let your learning goals drive your choices, and remember to consider the skills you want your students to build in addition to the theoretical knowledge you'd like them to acquire.
Student Scope Will students work alone or with others?  Active Learning by definition involves a feedback cycle for the learner to check his or her knowledge gains.  Pair, group and whole-class activities lend themselves to incorporating such feedback mechanisms, but intentinally designed individual tasks can accomplish similar ends.  Consider whether interpersonal skills are an aspect of what you would like to develop in your students, and for what purpose.
Content Type What type of content are students dealing with?  While the focus here on active and experiential learning is manifestly process-oriented, it's in the content of your course that the rubber hits the road learning-wise: in order to learn actively, students must learn something actively.  In designing your course, lessons and assignments be intentional and transparent about how theoretical vs. applied, how quantitative vs. descriptive etc. you expect students to be in interacting with the course content.
Assessment:

Final Product

 What will students have to do or produce?  How you assess students' work is not only a large motivator for how they approach a task, it also sends a much larger indication of your true motivation for assigning the work than any description you give. Since all final products take a specific form, the form you choose -- written or oral, traditional or novel -- implies what performance skills you value in addition to the underlying conceptual knowledge.
Product Audience Who will see their final product?  Knowing that their work will be seen (or possibly assessed) by their peers or by a larger audience has been shown to inspire a different level of attention to detail and clarity of expression in students. However, if the intended audience is not also "authentic" -- e.g., the course head member or other expert for an academic or policy assignment, or an informed "lay person" for a public-style debate, etc. -- then students' efforts will be framed for a correspondingly inappropriate reader/viewer.  Try to include the assessing party (usually you, but sometimes their peers or others -- you can even assess peers' feedback) as a part of the intended audience, but the audience can be much broader than just that.