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Marking Experts
Scholars spend their lifetimes studying a topic become experts, however, do those same scholars becoming experts at marking students’ work? There is good psychological research on gaining expertise, and if we have a look at some of it, becoming an expert entails more than being assigned the 11:00 a.m. slot on Tuesday mornings for the…
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The Value of Learning
Learning is natural. We begin to learn before we are born. The wonderment of childhood in largely because of the excitement that comes with learning. What happens to the excitement and what value do we put on learning? In a world where we are facing problems of epic proportions (climate change, aging populations, dysfunctional democracy, uncertain energy…
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Academic Skills: Why should We have to Teach Them?
In the late 90’s when the skills agenda was all the rage in the UK, I was tasked to develop a skills program. At the time they were key skills, and they were slowly transformed into employability skills. I don’t think anyone cared what they were called, they were all the same thing.…
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Information Scarcity & Information Abundance
I have written on this topic a number of times in the past. From a world (and an educational philosophy) built on information scarcity, we now find ourselves in a world of information abundance. I don’t know that we (as a community) have done very well in embracing this fundamental shift in…
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Virtuous Cycle of Higher Grades
I mentioned in my last post that Bjork presents ways to make knowledge transference an integrated part of learning. He also alludes to conditioning as one of the things that can get in the way of learning. In psychology, one of the basic principles of learning is shaping. Using shaping, you can get a bear to ride…
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Performance and Learning
Bjork‘s research demonstrates ways to make knowledge transference an integrated part of learning. In his chapter, Bjork alludes to conditioning as a primary problem in why transference and learning do not happen naturally. Transference is a difficult thing to learn. It’s easier to just learn the facts, and parrot them back again. In order…
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The Tyranny of Content
Stuff – that’s what we teach – stuff. Stuff and more stuff. We live in the information age, where information (and good quality information at that) is widely and freely available to more and more of us. Certainly, the availability of information to higher education students is at unprecedented levels. And yet, our…
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The Failed Promise of Technology
Why is it that technology has not revolutionized education. The promise of the decades has failed to fundamentally change education in any meaningful way. With all the educational technologies promising to change the world, I still have to agree with William Bagley (1934) “If I were seriously ill and in desperate need of a…
