What educators believe about how human brains function and what causes brains to change is one of the most important factors that determines how they organize curriculum and deliver instruction. Even those educators who claim to be unaffected by psychology or learning theory (in my experience a large majority of teachers eschew theory), their teaching Read More
Author: Gary Ackerman
Education for Information-Rich Fields
We all know the teacher who insists, “but my field is content-rich. I need to cover all of this, so that students are ready for next year.” This attitude is grounded in a sincere interest that students “know” what they should know. It also results in the teacher adopting the “fill their brains” with information approach to teaching. What is becoming Read More
“Why Would One Create OER?”
This question was posed to me by an incredulous business-minded faculty member who wondered exactly why I would spend my time and energy and creativity writing books and other intellectual property simply to give it away. “What motivation does anyone have to produce something that others can just take?” they asked. I realized that person Read More
Elevators Pitch on Scaffolding
Scaffolding is an approach that can be used to teaching for deeper learning. This is especially useful when an instructor wants to approach a problem from the whole task, but it is too complicate for the students to complete independently. In this case, the teacher introduces scaffolds so to problem enters the students’ zone of proximal development. With scaffolds, Read More
Carving Out Time for Authentic Learning
Are Twitter followers colleagues? My answer is yes, based on the number of times threads have led me to think about what I really mean in these short posts. Also based on the number of times Tweets cause me to look back at things that I recall as being effective in the past and I Read More
The Skills Landscape
We have heard for a generation “your students will have jobs that don’t exist yet.” I paid attention as my children (who are now much closer to 30 than 20) graduated from high school, went to college, and entered the workforce, and they and their friends entered fields that existed previously. Now, however, they and Read More
Elevator Pitch on Culture and Learning
The culture that learners experience contributes to their views and perspectives that determine what is important to them and the people around them. These become the learned behaviors that determine what learners value, how they define learning, and other decisions about how learning occurs. Educators observe how deviation from cultural expectations affect learners’ actions in Read More
An Elevator Pitch on the Changing Nature of Teaching and Learning
Teaching and learning are endeavors that have changed significantly in the decades since the cognitive science and the learning sciences emerged. More accurately, the nature of human learning has not changed, but our understanding of it has changed and this has led scholars and educators to redefine what they expect of students. Yes, teachers are Read More
Social Aspects of Learning
145: Social Aspects of Learning Normal brain development depends on social interaction, and the social nature of human learning continues throughout life, and deeper learning has social components. In recent decades, cognitive and learning scientists have converged on the conclusion that human cognitions is a strongly social phenomenon. Michael Gazzaniga (2008), a noted neuroscientist who Read More
Improving Memory and Recall
Scientists have identified several strategies whereby individuals can improve their memories, however. While these can be used effectively when adopting a content-only approach to teaching, they can also be incorporated in other ways. For example, faculty can recommend students use these outside of class in homework situations; this allows students to invest as much time Read More