Applying Research On Learning to Teaching.

To become masterful teachers, faculty members need a knowledge base not only in their own content area, but also in a variety of other areas that center around such issues as student learning and classroom management. However, faculty members who want to improve their students’

learning generally encounter two kinds of resources if they seek themout: research articles with technical discussions of learning, or books and websites that provide concrete strategies for course design and classroom pedagogy. While texts of the first type are written to promote scientific progress, they tend not to be very accessible or useful to practitioners because of their technical detail and unclear application to the classroom. While texts of the second type are written in a language that instructors can appreciate, they tend not to go beyond the specific strategies described, leaving instructors without a sense of why those strategies work. That is, neither of these genres offers what many instructors really need – a model of student learning that enables instructors to make sound teaching decisions. This interactive session aims to bridge research and practice by providing a discussion of seven research-based principles of learning that will enable faculty members to more effectively and efficiently reflect on, revise, and assess their own teaching, especially as we provide you with an opportunity to translate the principles into effective teaching practices in your own courses.