This paper discusses three types of active teaching and learning methodologies: problem-based learning, problem-posing, and case method. It is a comparison between their theoretical foundations and their practices, based on a literature review. The goal is to differentiate these types of active methodologies so that educators can plan, implement and properly evaluate their uses. The results of the literature review and the comparison show, despite several similarities, important differences between these three types of active methodologies, such as: its origins and theoretical references, the construction of problems or cases, the driving and the place where the studies take place, the elaboration of hypotheses and the application of the results, among others. As future work, it is suggested that such comparisons be extended to other types of active methodologies, such as project-based learning, which is sometimes confused with the ones here studied.