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…
GUEST POST: Using Checklists to Improve College Teaching
Why might checklists help? First, our memories and intellects are fallible. We suffer from cognitive overload. Second, we’re overconfident. We might skip some steps because we’re confident that we can succeed regardless. Checklists address both problems…
GUEST POST: The Mind's CEO: Executive Function
Stop me if you've heard this one. The left hemisphere of your brain is responsible for logical processing; the right hemisphere is designed for creative and wholistic thinking. While there may be a tiny grain of truth to these over-generalizations, there is a much less talked about difference in brain functioning. As you go from the back of the brain to the front, thinking goes from extremely concrete to highly abstract.