The active voice generally has the following distinguishing features:

• it has a subject who performs the action

• the subject agent (doer) usually comes before the verb

• it has an active verb

• the order of the words in the sentence is usually: subject – verb – object.

In this example:

• ‘The class’ is the subject or agent

• ‘discussed’ is the action or verb

• ‘the project plan’ is the object of that action

• use of the active voice makes the sentence more direct, conversational and shorter.