Interactive learning

The Learning Scientists

Introduction Learning design is the intentional process of planning and implementing educational experiences to create cohesive, engaging learning environments. It is one of the most challenging aspects of being a college instructor because it requires balancing multiple goals: meeting institutional and accreditation standards, aligning with departmental expectations, supporting diverse learning needs, and ensuring that assessments accurately measure student learning. Instructors ... Read More

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Newsletter #14

Active learning has been clearly shown to be more effective than traditional modes, write Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis, who outline its many merits to those who continue to resist it.

Some professors hesitate to try active learning because they won’t be able to include as much material. New research findings might put them at ease.

The Need to Know Teacher says so Adults learn what they need to get through the course. It needs to be important to other person. Why is what they are learning important? Importance of the skill and how it relates to what they are doing. Why?

The Educationalist. By Alexandra Mihai

Here is a basic overview of Bloom's Taxonomy. If you like this video, please consider subscribing to my channel. Description: In the 1950’s, educational psychologist, Dr. Benjamin Bloom, led a team of researchers and educators who developed a model for educational learning objectives. Their goal was to create a taxonomy to help improve critical thinking in schools. The end result was the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in 1956. More commonly referred to as Bloom’s Taxonomy, this model breaks learning objectives down into three domains. The first was cognitive domain, which focused on the acquisition of knowledge. The second was the affective domain, which focused on emotions and attitudes and tends to tie into student engagement. The final domain is psychomotor, which focuses on actions and motor skills. The most prominent is the cognitive domain, which is what many educators use when crafting objectives and learning targets, constructing questions, and designing assessments. Bloom’s Taxonomy is often represented as a hierarchy, though it was never explicitly meant to treat lower levels as “less than” or higher levels as “better than.” Instead, the bottom levels are foundational and build up progressively to higher levels. Here is the original Bloom’s Taxonomy, which goes from knowledge to comprehension to application to analysis to synthesis to evaluation. More recently, scholars have updated Bloom’s Taxonomy by taking knowledge out of the cognitive domain and making a new knowledge domain with factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge. They have also revised the cognitive domain. Let’s take a look. The first level is remember, which focuses on the recall or retrieval of information. Students might be able to list the order for classifying organisms, define the symbols on a map, recall how to shoot a free throw, or identify how to search for information online. The second is understand, which focuses on comprehension rather than just recall. Here students engage in organizing, translating, and generalizing information. Students might summarize the key events in a novel, classify governmental systems given case studies, clarify the steps in playing an instrument, or explain how they solved a problem. Next is apply, where a student uses the prior knowledge in a new situation. It might involve practicing a skill in a new context. Or students might provide advice given a scenario, use a rhetoric technique in a speech, apply a strategy to a new problem, or carry out a test in a science experiment. The fourth level is analyze, where students examine and breakdown information. Here, they might identify causes and effects in a historical event or a scientific phenomenon, compare and contrast ideas or ideologies, make inferences, look for trends in mathematical data, or find evidence to support generalizations. The fifth level is evaluate, where students defend opinions, make judgments and assess information. Students might rank inventions for their impact on history, draw conclusions from an experiment, judge the validity of data, or assess the quality of a theater performance or a work of art. The sixth and final level is create, where students generate something new based on prior knowledge. It might be a new idea, a new solution, or a new system. However, there are some criticisms of Bloom’s Taxonomy. First, it treats learning as sequential. However, learning isn’t always linear. For example, a teacher might start with an evaluation-based question to pique students’ interest or do a hands-on application activity. A second criticism is with the use of a hierarchy. This implies specific levels that are dependent on each other as building blocks. However, learning might be more of a sliding continuum. Furthermore, Bloom’s Taxonomy relies on a clear distinction of categories. However, mental processes are complex, connective, and idiosyncratic making categories seem kind of arbitrary. Finally, it’s outdated. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a product of its time – a Cold War USA. This was a solid decade before the first humans landed on the moon. This is why some critics argue that a more accurate model of mental processes should be built on our current understandings of neuroscience. And yet, for all these criticisms, Bloom’s Taxonomy remains prevalent at both the K-12 and higher education levels. Perhaps Bloom’s Taxonomy is less of a learning theory and more of a framework, albeit flawed, that reminds us to incorporate critical thinking in the classroom and take learning to a higher level.

You introduce yourself and then someone mispronounces your name. At that point you have to decide if you correct them or let it slide. For many people from immigrant communities, this has been a lifelong experience. And sometimes, it's about more than mispronunciation, it can signal exclusion and disrespect. Some people even change their names in order to fit in more easily and not be "othered."For years, LA Times columnist, Jean Guerrero, let people say her name without rolling their r's, the way it would be said in Spanish. But after becoming the target of MAGA trolls online, she decided to reclaim the proper Spanish pronunciation.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

“Do adults learn differently?” This has been a fundamental question that I have been asked time and time again. Much of what we know about learning and memory comes from research on students To generalize from these studies to someone mid-career… is that reasonable?

Faculty should emphasize the six andragogical principles developed by Knowles to help explain "why" an assignment is important.

Rebecca Mills, Director of Learning and Teaching, quickly summarizes Dr. L. Dee Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning to help faculty incorporate it into t...

Jennifer Gonzalez talks with a researcher and a teacher to tackle the science—and the logistics—behind teaching strategies like spaced practice and interleaving.