Is there a difference between memorizing material and understanding material? And if so, shouldn’t educators focus on the presumably better, more wholistic of the two, understanding rather than rote memorization?
Designing Effective Instructional Videos
Last summer, many instructors were scrambling to adjust to teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. For many teachers that meant developing videos for students to watch. We’ve discussed some of the research on how students learn from videos, and this week I want to take a look at how best to create videos for students.
Digest #153: Neurodiversity in Education
For today’s digest I teamed up with Dr Chiara Horlin who is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Psychology at the University of Glasgow and an expert in neurodiversity and what role it plays in education…
The Value of Knowing Your Audience
My aunt challenged me to write a blog post about “our crazy family”. My aunt’s challenge made me think of my crazy family through the lens of cognitive psychology. We spend a lot of time together and, because of that shared experience, we have very similar knowledge structures (or schema).
GUEST POST: THE BIG REVEAL: Showing Students How Metacognition Works
When I talk to adults about metacognition, I begin with a broken vacuum cleaner (a picture of it, that is) and ask, 'What would you do if your vacuum stopped working?’ Someone always says they would kick it, but most people take a more measured approach. They might begin by opening it up to see …
Encouraging Students to Adopt Effective Learning Strategies
If you regularly read our blog or have utilized the downloadable materials on our website, then you know there is a great deal of research supporting the use of the strategies we discuss, like retrieval practice and spaced practice. These strategies have been around for over a century…