In days of old, a good bit of learning was done by rote memorization. The lesson is given. Recite and repeat over and over until you’ve got it down. Rote learning still exists. It gets used in some places and for some topics. A radically different approach is discovery learning. With discovery … [Read more...] about Guided Discovery Learning: Balancing Student Freedom and Support
What is Cognition and What Good is it?
You never used to hear anyone say the word cognition. More and more, it seems to crop up in all kinds of places. I see cognition crop up in newspapers, magazines, and letters from my kid’s school. As someone who makes his living off of cognition, that’s comforting. But what is cognition really … [Read more...] about What is Cognition and What Good is it?
Critical Thinking and the Internet: Skills for a New Era
Learning has gotten complicated. We often need to answer challenging technical and scientific questions to get by in our everyday life. The web has become the default means to get those answers. Yet learning from the internet is fraught with difficulty. Searching, sorting, and synthesizing … [Read more...] about Critical Thinking and the Internet: Skills for a New Era
Using Students’ Questions to Check for Understanding
You'd like a quick way to check for understanding without a formal test. Something formative. Different. And maybe a little fun. As it turns out, Art Graesser and Brent Olde at the University of Memphis have discovered a great way to tell whether a person really understands … [Read more...] about Using Students’ Questions to Check for Understanding
Evaluating Sources: Know What’s Credible on the Web
Search results can turn up lots of interesting-looking pages, but efficient web learning means spending most of your time looking at the high-quality sites. People who know how to learn from the internet tend to be highly discriminating in their web site selection. They are good at evaluating … [Read more...] about Evaluating Sources: Know What’s Credible on the Web
Study Strategies for Multimedia Learning Environments
Interactive, multimedia learning environments provide far more stimulation than traditional textbooks. Images, video, and links to extra material can enthrall and overwhelm, but do all those extras really lead to enhanced learning? Initial research has indicated somewhat disappointing results … [Read more...] about Study Strategies for Multimedia Learning Environments