"What lessons from teaching in the pandemic will you take back into the classroom?"

Answered by our EdCog 2021 experts:

Irina Ghilic

Educational Developer, Teaching and Learning Services, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University

Amy Pachai

Educational Developer, Teaching and Learning Services, DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University

Christa Morrison

Business Systems Specialist, Collaboration and Productivity Services, Central IT, McMaster University

Deena Kara Shaffer

Coordinator, Student Transitions and Retention, Ryerson University
President, Learning Specialists Association of Canada

Paul Denny

Associate Professor, Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Sam Clarke

Educational Developer, MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching, McMaster University

Andrew LoGiudice

Educational Developer, MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching, McMaster University

"What advice would you give to new students attending university this year?"

Answered by experts on the psychology of learning:

John Dunlosky

Professor of Psychology, Kent State
University & Director of SOLE (Science of Learning and Education) Center

Melody Wiseheart

Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, York University

Jennifer Heisz

Assistant Professor, Department of Kinesiology, McMaster University

Danny Oppenheimer

Professor, Department of Psychology & Business, UCLA

Tanya Martini

Professor, Department of Psychology, Brock University

Teaching Distracted Minds: Old Challenges, New Contexts

Abstract

Faculty frequently express concerns about the distractions and distractibility of our students, but our real focus should be on how we help students achieve attention. This talk draws upon scholarship from history, neuroscience, and education in order to argue that distractions are endemic to the human condition, and can’t be walled out of the physical classroom or online course. Instead, we should focus on creating educational experiences that cultivate attention. The session will unfold in two parts, with opportunities for questions and conversation after each half. Part one will provide both historical and biological context on the role that distraction and attention play in education; part two will explore pedagogical practices that we can use to cultivate, support, and sustain student attention.

Biography

James M. Lang is a Professor of English and the Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption University in Worcester, MA. He is the author of six books, the most recent of which are Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It (Basic Books, 2020), Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2016) and Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013), and On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP, 2008).

Building Academic Resilience: Evidence-based practices for teaching students to embrace and learn from failure

Abstract

Failure is a critical component of learning, however students often view failure in a negative light. How can we encourage our students to see the value of failure, learn how to fail well, and become resilient learners? This session will start with an exploration of the literature on productive failure and resiliency-building approaches in academia. We will then dive into a recent novel course reframing called FLIP (Failure: Learning in Progress). The purpose of this FLIP course reframing project was to (1) establish instructional tools and approaches for teaching students to embrace and learn from failure; (2) develop both formative and summative assessment methods for failure bounceback; and (3) create a resource of failure narratives that can be used in courses across disciplines. In addition, we will explore how online instruction may offer additional opportunities for the teaching of failure and resiliency.

Biography

Fiona Rawle has a Ph.D in Pathology and Molecular Medicine and is the Associate Dean, Undergraduate, at the University of Toronto Mississauga, and an Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, in the Dept. of Biology. Her research focuses on failure-driven learning, the science of learning, and public communication of science. She has received numerous awards focused on teaching, including the University of Toronto’s President’s Teaching Award. Dr. Rawle is also a member of the University of Toronto’s TIDE group (Toronto Initiative for Diversity & Excellence), through which she gives lectures and workshops on unconscious bias, equity, and diversity.

Lessons learned from teaching a large introductory psychology course: What works, what doesn't, and what isn't worth the effort

Abstract

After 7 years of helping to teach and coordinate a large introductory psychology class, I have learned that some things work well with big classes and some things can be a total disaster. In this talk, I will discuss the projects, assignments, and technologies that we have implemented successfully and unsuccessfully throughout the years. This will include writing projects, practice tests, iclickers, gamification, learning portfolios, peer-created practice questions, and student presentations. We will examine student feedback to see what students enjoyed and what they found frustrating. We will also look at the effects these practices had on final grades. The goal of the presentation will be to explore what worked, what didn’t, and what simply wasn’t worth the effort.

Biography

Michelle Cadieux is the course coordinator for Introductory Psychology at McMaster University. She helps to teach over 4,500 students every year. Her primary research involves investigating the best methods and practices for instructing the largest class at McMaster. Dr. Cadieux’s position puts her on the front lines of exploring what can be done to help students transition to university life and achieve their academic goals. She examines how different course structures can promote or hinder learning, while paying particular interest to the role that online learning now plays in many large classrooms. She is most interested in how to improve overall student engagement to prevent students from being lost in a sea of first year undergraduates.

Documenting the Wandering Mind During University Lectures

Abstract

Students often have a difficult time maintaining attention throughout lectures, which in turn has a detrimental impact on what they are able to learn. Distractions come from all angles – either from within, due to mind wandering about current stressors or unrelated thoughts, or from the environment, due to the actions of their peers or their ever-present cell phones and laptops. In this talk I will discuss markers of mind wandering and inattention, outline the costs of these lapses in attention, and present the results from several field studies, conducted over entire semesters in real university lectures, which monitor trends in disengagement over time. I will present our newest means of monitoring student engagement, a trio of laptop apps intended to seamlessly merge student reports of engagement with instructor-presented content. Findings from these projects move beyond the traditional laboratory setting, highlighting real-world trends in attention, while pointing toward future interventions designed to redirect student focus. More recently, the shift to exclusively online teaching presents several new opportunities for distraction which are not yet well understood. To finish the talk, I discuss how we can better document the consequences of this shift for learning and attention.

Biography

Jeff Wammes is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Queen’s University, and the director of the lamp (learning, attention, memory and perception) lab. Wammes earned his PhD from University of Waterloo and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University. His work uses behavioural, computational and neuroimaging methods to understand how we reorganize, strengthen and retrieve information in memory. He also studies how mind wandering and other forms of inattention influence learning. Wherever possible, his research extends findings and theory from the lab into relevant real-world settings, including entire semesters of lecture-based undergraduate courses.

Practicing Connections, A Practical Theory for Teaching Hard Things to All Students

Abstract

Despite the valuable research into the cognitive, affective, and neurological effects of learning experiences, there is still a research-to-practice gap: many educational materials are designed independently of what we know from research to produce deep understanding, and such learning is still viewed as an elusive outcome of our educational system (Biesta, 2007; Canole, Dyke, Oliver, & Seale, 2004; Levin, 2004; Smeyers & Depaepe, 2013; Vanderlinde & van Braak, 2010). Especially as instructors hurriedly moved over to remote teaching in the beginning of the 2020 pandemic, there was neither the time, resources, nor mental space to consider the research on teaching and learning. Since instruction is an undoubtedly multivariate system that is constantly subject to resource constraints, we need a different way to do research, disseminate research, and conceptualize educational findings. This talk will focus on a practical theory of how deep understanding occurs in an authentic discipline (e.g., statistics and data science) over time, called “practicing connections,” that is currently being tested in a new model of research and development where researchers and instructors continuously develop, implement, and revise a free online interactive textbook for introductory statistics based on student learning data. Live experiments with students are conducted in the textbook and any innovations that arise from the research are then directly implemented in the freely available learning materials so that data-based innovations can be easily accessed. Ultimately, we hope to build a better way for instructors and students to benefit from research.

Biography

Ji Y. Son is Professor of Psychology at California State University at Los Angeles and director of the Learning Lab at Cal State LA. She is a co-author of the interactive textbook “Introduction to Statistics: A Modeling Approach” published using CourseKata.org. Her PhD in Cognitive Science and Psychology is from Indiana University, Bloomington. She is interested in how basic cognitive and perceptual processes foster rich and transferable learning. Her work examines methods of applying these psychological insights at scale to issues like mathematics remediation and student success. The central idea behind Ji’s work is that learning changes the way we see the world.

Learning with Others: The Mechanisms and Learning Benefits of Peer Instruction

Abstract

Working with classmates to solve problems and answer questions is a fixture of pedagogy from kindergarten to graduate school. Peer instruction is one paradigm for working with classmates which is widely used – especially throughout physics instruction. In peer instruction, instructors pose a challenging question to students, students answer the question individually, students work with a partner in the class to discuss their answers, and finally students answer the question again. Student answers are consistently more accurate following discussion than before discussion. Across several undergraduate and graduate courses, I examine the mechanism underlying the benefits of peer instruction. Results indicate that peer discussions prompt learners to deeply process concepts and verbally explain their answers, which tests their coherence and identifies gaps in their knowledge. Further, I compare the short-term and long-term learning benefits of peer instruction to class discussion, small group discussion, and working alone. The data show that class and group discussions yield greater short-term gains than peer instruction, but also show significantly greater rates of forgetting. In contrast, preliminary data suggest that working alone may prevent forgetting even better than peer instruction. I will discuss the implications of peer instruction for classroom pedagogy, with a particular emphasis on implementation in e-learning settings.

Biography

Jonathan Tullis is the principal investigator of the Cognition And Memory in Education and Learning (CAMEL) Lab in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Arizona. Jonathan earned his PhD in cognitive psychology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and completed a post-doc at Indiana University. He investigates how to structure and adapt learning environments to match the characteristics and quirks of memory and cognition. To that end, he examines how ideas and examples should be designed and organized to support memory and appropriate transfer of concepts. He also examines how students monitor and control their own learning. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation.

Data Blitz

Talks

Michelle Rivers

00:44 – What do learners believe about practice testing, and do they use it effectively?

Skylar Laursen

07:23 – Contextual Influences on the Reciprocal Relationship between Monitoring and Control Strategies in Self-Regulated Learning

Lydia Hicks

14:52 – COVID-19 and the classroom: The impact of a global pandemic on undergraduate learning experiences

Bill Ju

20:48 – Meta-cognitive multiple choice – better for everyone and not as complicated as it might sound

Alyssa Smith

30:13 – Deep effortless learning: Flow predicts engagement, understanding, and grades in undergraduate lectures

Jessica Saini, Angela Nguyen, Beata Cheung

36:28 – Examining How Novices Learn Neuroanatomy Through Eye-Tracking Technology

Stefan M. Mladjenovic

43:34 – Echo360 to support learning in-class and online

The Challenges Ahead for the Fall Term and Beyond

Panelists

Tony Bates

Contact North

Joanne Kehoe

MacPherson Institute

Laura Cole

Mohawk College

Fawziyah Isah

McMaster Student Union

Victor Benassi

University of New Hampshire

Discussion led by Dr. Joe Kim

Discussion Questions

Theme: The Challenges Ahead for the Fall Term and Beyond

Q1: Given the challenges of blended and online learning, should university instructors require qualifications in teaching as well as research?
Q2: As a result of your emergency remote teaching, what benefits/aspects of online learning will you retain once on-campus teaching resumes?
Q3: Should we get rid of very large lecture classes altogether?
Q4: Do you think that there might be a cohort effect – students who will face challenges learning in a non-online environment when we go back to “normal”?
Q5: What one piece of advice would you give to instructors for this fall semester?

Beliefs About the Nature of Ability and Effort: Their Role in Learning, Parenting, and Teaching

Abstract

Research on students’ growth mindsets (i.e., their beliefs about whether intelligence is malleable) has grown quite popular in recent years. However, these mindsets are just one understanding in a complex constellation of beliefs that students hold about the nature of intellectual ability and effort, many of which may have important implications for students’ motivation and learning. In the first half of this talk, I will explore this complexity, with a particular focus on students’ effort source beliefs (i.e., their beliefs about whether intellectual effort originates from internal or external sources).

Importantly, students’ motivation and learning are not solely influenced by their own beliefs about ability and effort. What parents and teachers believe about the nature of ability may influence the ways in which they support children’s learning. In the second half of the talk, I will discuss research suggesting that parents and teachers with strong growth mindsets are more likely than those with weak growth mindsets to engage in autonomy-supportive instructional practices (practices which may promote self-regulated learning) and less likely to engage in controlling practices, particularly when working with a student who is perceived to have low levels of ability in a particular domain.

Biography

David Miele is the principal investigator of the Motivation, Metacognition, and Learning (MML) Laboratory at Boston College. He investigates students’ beliefs about their ability, learning, and motivation, and examines how these beliefs influence their engagement in academic tasks. At the broadest level, he is interested in what it takes for students to become effective, independent learners. Though much of his research has examined the motivation of college students, he is also interested in the developmental period of late elementary school (third to fifth grade). In addition, he has conducted research with parents and teachers in order to better understand how their beliefs influence the ways in which they support the learning of elementary school students.

Using Prequestions to Enhance Student Learning

Abstract

Much research has shown that practicing to retrieve information enhances learning. In nearly all of the studies on retrieval practice, students retrieve information after they have been introduced to it via a lecture or reading assignment. Very little is known about the effects of asking students questions before they learn something. In a series of laboratory- and classroom-based studies, students were given “prequestions” over information they were about to learn, and their learning of the material was later assessed. In her talk, Dr. Carpenter will report the results of this research and discuss the implications for teaching and learning.

Biography

Shana Carpenter is an associate professor of cognitive psychology at Iowa State University. Her research interests include the application of memory principles to improve student learning and metacognition. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation to implement principles from the science of learning within educational practice. Dr. Carpenter currently serves as associate editor for the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (JARMAC), and serves on the editorial boards for several other journals in cognitive and educational psychology.

Brain-to-Brain Synchrony in the Classroom

Abstract

The dynamic interaction between a teacher and a group of learners is fundamental to the learning process in the classroom, yet we know very little about how the brain supports these interactions. My research utilizes portable electroencephalogram (EEG) technology to measure the brain activity of groups of students during classroom activities. Using this method, my colleagues and I have demonstrated that students’ and teachers’ brainwaves become synchronized (i.e. exhibit temporally coupled response patterns) when teachers and students are interacting with each other. Further, brain-to-brain synchrony was found to be predictive of students’ engagement and social relationships. My current research extends this approach to technology-enhanced learning, comparing the brain dynamics of students in face-to-face and online environments. In my talk, I will discuss these findings as well as how brain technologies can be used to engage students in authentic research in their classroom.

Biography

Ido Davidesco is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at New York University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and then completed postdoctoral fellowships at Princeton University and New York University (NYU). His research utilizes portable brain technologies to investigate learning in real-world environments. Dr. Davidesco is the founder of the NYU Neuroscience and Education Collaborative, an interdisciplinary group that builds partnerships between researchers and educators. He is also the 2017 recipient of the Society for Neuroscience Next Generation Award.

Investigating the Spread of Attention/Inattention in the Classroom

Abstract

Everyday experience suggests that attentiveness (or inattentiveness) can spread through a group. We are investigating this “attention contagion” between students in a classroom setting. Our principal hypothesis is that both attentive behaviours (e.g., leaning forward, frequent notetaking) and inattentive behaviours (e.g., slouching, infrequent notetaking) can be transmitted to a student from a nearby classmate, affecting the student’s attentional engagement in the lecture. To test this hypothesis, we conducted an experiment in which pairs of students watched a 45-minute lecture video (on the history of Pompeii) in a simulated classroom environment. One student—the participant—was seated behind another student—a confederate posing as another participant and trained to exhibit either attentive or inattentive behaviours. Consistent with our “attention contagion” hypothesis, relative to students paired with the inattentive confederate, students paired with the attentive confederate took significantly more notes and self-reported being more attentive to the lecture. We also found a strong positive association between attentiveness and lecture comprehension. Implications for sustaining students’ attention in the classroom will be discussed.

Biography

Dr. Noah Forrin is an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Psychology at McMaster University. During his graduate studies at the University of Waterloo, Noah advanced theories of attention, associative learning, and memory. His current program of research focuses on factors that influence learning in educational settings. Noah is particularly interested in examining how attention (and inattention) spreads in the classroom. He is also studying the negative effect that performance anticipation has on memory (e.g., failing to remember information from the talk that preceded your own at a conference). Noah is also an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Waterloo, where he teaches Basic Research Methods.

What do real live cognitive psychologists do in their own classroom teaching?

Welcome to My Classroom: Engaging Students in Large Lecture Classes

Abstract

The large lecture classroom poses a number of challenges for any instructor. You need to use different techniques, deal with noise levels, try to make sure that students do not feel anonymous…and you have to be engaging.

In my 800 student classroom, about thirty percent believe they will continue in psychology. Another twenty percent have not completely decided, and the remainder are taking the course as an elective. The challenge for me is to light the fire of knowledge for the thirty percent and convince the rest that they really want to pursue psychology too. To engage students I use a number of techniques in a lively, fast-paced delivery that maintains attention, creates rapport, and challenges students to think about issues. In my presentation, I will model some of these techniques and then invite the audience to think about how to use these in their own classrooms.

Biography

Mike Atkinson was born in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia and received his B.Sc. from Dalhousie University in 1975. With an interest in social psychology (particularly aggression and nonverbal behaviour), he received his MSc (1978) and PhD (1982) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Over the years, he has become increasingly interested in the process of education and have moved to the educational psychology area. How can we teach large classes most effectively? Are there any benefits to using multimedia in the classroom? Do students really learn from instructors who use a variety of engaging techniques? Important factors include student involvement, structure and organization of the material, and the ability to “engage”. Mike is the recipient of a number of prestigious teaching awards including: 3M Canada Teaching Fellow, USC & Alumni Western Teaching Award of Excellence, Edward G. Pleva Award for Excellence in Teaching, Six time recipient UWO Psychology Professor of the Year, and has been featured in: Maclean’s magazine, Media television Globe & Mail, APA Monitor.

X Reality and the Concorde Fallacy in Education

Abstract

Since the invention of stereoscopes in the 19th century technology-mediated reality (X Reality or XR) in anatomy education has been dominated by extravagant promises of educational efficacy. Careful testing of XR anatomy over the last 8 years has shown that 3D projections, mixed reality and virtual reality are about as effective for learning cadaveric anatomy as pictures showing the key views of a specimen and 15-20% less effective than solid models. The superiority of the solid, physical model appears to be the result of stereopsis not, as one might expect, handling the model or the similarity between the model and the test material. The huge investment required to make and market consumer-ready products and the prestige of making the “killer app” for anatomy has led to considerable sunk monetary and emotional costs which has subverted much of the rational evaluation of this technology.

Biography

Bruce Wainman, PhD, is the Director of the Education Program in Anatomy and the Surgical Skills Laboratory at McMaster University, a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, an Associate Member of the Department of Ob/Gyn and the Coordinator of Biological Sciences for the Ontario Midwifery Consortium.

Bruce’s research is on various aspects of anatomy education and the effects of environmental contaminants on fertility and the menstrual cycle. Recent eBooks produced by Dr Wainman include “Pharmacology Revealed” and “Physical Assessment of the Well Woman and Newborn.”

Dr Wainman lectures at McMaster mainly on anatomy, pharmacology and reproductive physiology to the MD, undergrad Health Sciences and Midwifery programs. For his teaching activities he has received the McMaster Student Union Award numerous times, the President’s Award for Education, the Canadian Association for Medical Education Certificate of Merit Award for 2015, Osler Lecture Award and a 3M National Teaching Fellowship.

Applying the Science of Learning from the Laboratory to the Classroom

Abstract

Decades of cognitive research can inform classroom learning. However, the research is not always translated into practice. During the talk, Dr. Sumeracki will describe the way in which cognitive research spans the laboratory to the classroom, providing examples from her own program of research on retrieval-based learning. She will then discuss ways that she and her colleagues have worked to create more bidirectional communication between learning researchers and classroom teachers through The Learning Scientists.

Biography

Megan Sumeracki (formerly Smith) is an Assistant Professor at Rhode Island College. She received her Master’s in Experimental Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Purdue University. Megan studies human learning and memory, specifically applying the science of learning in educational contexts. Her research focuses on retrieval-based learning strategies, and the way retrieval can improve meaningful learning. Megan’s work has been published in journals such as Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition, and Applied Cognitive Psychology. Megan has given talks at regional and national conferences in the US, and abroad such as a lecture at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and delivering the Keynote at ResearchED in Rugby, England. Megan is also passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice in education. In an effort to promote more conversations between researchers and practitioners, she co-founded The Learning Scientists (www.learningscientists.org).

A Toolkit for Building Better Learners

Abstract

Given that the majority of learning takes place in the learners’ own hands, it is important that we understand how to manage our own learning effectively and efficiently. Despite being engaged in learning throughout our lives, research shows that our intuitions about how we learn are oftentimes exactly wrong, leading us to choose suboptimal learning strategies over more effective and efficient ones. While intuitions tell us that we should find strategies that make learning feel easy, the most effective study strategies are in fact the ones that introduce challenges to the learner and engage them more effortfully (aka “desirable difficulties”). Being an effective, self-regulated learner therefore not only requires knowing the right toolset of strategies to use, but also requires holding the right mindsets to appreciate that difficulty is important and integral to the process of learning. That is, having the right mindset for learning not only encourages learners to study harder, but is also important for teaching learners to study smarter.

Biography

Dr. Veronica Yan (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles) is an assistant professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Bridging cognitive, social, and educational perspectives, Dr. Yan’s research explores how we can empower people to become motivated and effectively self-regulated learners. Dr. Yan is presently focused on examining the mechanisms underlying ‘desirably difficult’ strategies and the motivational mindsets that encourage learners to not just study harder, but to study smarter. Her own educational background has spanned three continents: She studied at an international school in Hong Kong, before heading to the University of Cambridge for undergraduate studies in England, and completed her doctoral studies and postdoctoral training in California in the US.

Is there validity to surface and deep approaches to learning?

Abstract

This panel kicks off with a brief presentation that questions the validity of the often-cited surface & deep approaches to learning construct. Based on a critical review of the literature that uses the Study Process Questionnaire (Biggs, et. al., 2001) to distinguish between students who use deep approaches vs. those who focus on surface-level memorizing as well as data from a pilot lab/classroom study, we find no correlation between either group and their performance on a learning-transfer task. These preliminary findings raise broader questions for the panelists to respond to interventions in education that are not rooted in evidence which not only contribute to enduringly powerful mythologies in teaching and learning but also widen the gap between theory and practice. The panelists will also share reflections on specific areas of inquiry and practice bridging gaps in bringing together researchers and practitioners that Education & Cognition Symposium aspires to address.

Biography

Geoff Norman, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University. He is the author of 23 books and book chapters in education, measurement and statistics, and over 300 journal articles. He has won many awards, including the Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Educational Research Association, and the Karolinska Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Medical Education . He held a Canada Research Chair from 2001-2015. He was elected to the Royal Society of Canada in 2007.

Arshad Ahmad received his MBA and PhD in Educational Psychology at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada. He is currently the Vice-Provost, Teaching & Learning at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and the Director of The Paul R. MacPherson Institute for Leadership, Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. Arshad was recognized as a 3M National Teaching Fellow in 1992 and was past president of The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, a national association of teachers and education developers in Canada and vice-president of The International Consortium for Educational Development consisting of 24 member organizations worldwide. Arshad’s current research interests are in Teaching Philosophies, Approaches to Teaching and Students as Partners.

Pakeezah Saadat is a graduate student at McMaster University pursuing Health Research Methods, with research interest in ICU admissions in the elderly population. She aspires to pursue medicine to contribute towards the field of research methodology from a clinical perspective.

Andrew LoGiudice is a PhD student in the Cognitive Science lab at McMaster University. His research focuses on techniques for facilitating transfer of learning, and how nonanalytic processes drive performance on basic memory tasks and clinical reasoning.

Dr. Veronica Yan (PhD, University of California, Los Angeles) is an assistant professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. Bridging cognitive, social, and educational perspectives, Dr. Yan’s research explores how we can empower people to become motivated and effectively self-regulated learners. Dr. Yan is presently focused on examining the mechanisms underlying ‘desirably difficult’ strategies and the motivational mindsets that encourage learners to not just study harder, but to study smarter. Her own educational background has spanned three continents: She studied at an international school in Hong Kong, before heading to the University of Cambridge for undergraduate studies in England, and completed her doctoral studies and postdoctoral training in California in the US.

The Age of Information: Preparing for the Tsunami

Abstract

We have entered an information age that will enhance human cognition and affect jobs, lives and education. It will have as profound an impact on society as the industrial revolution had 250 years ago by enhancing human physical power. The timetable for this transformation will be much more rapid than the industrial revolution: It took 100 years for the world to adapt to machines; the information age is already happening and will play out over the next few decades.

Biography

Terry Sejnowski is a scientist for all seasons. Trained as a theoretical physicist, he was a pioneer in the neural network revolution and trailblazed a new computational approach to understanding brain function. He holds the Francis Crick Chair at The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Engineering.

Facilitating Student Learning Through Feedback

Abstract

Our world abounds with false information – urban legends, political slander, and untruths about other cultures are just a few of the many possible examples. Often this false information is innocuous, but some of it is quite malicious because it undermines people’s understanding of the world and conflicts with learning the truth. For instance, consider the common misconceptions that people have about physics (i.e. “naive physics”), such as the belief that the motion of objects is caused by internal forces. Such false knowledge profoundly affects people’s interpretation of basic physical phenomena and can interfere with the learning of core science principles. In this talk, Dr. Andrew C. Butler will present research that helps us to understand how feedback can be used to correct false knowledge. One goal of the talk will be to examine some of the conventional wisdom in education about learning from feedback. Among other topics, he will discuss the role of metacognitive monitoring, the interaction between existing knowledge and newly learned information, and the temporal dynamics of error-correction.

Biography

Dr. Butler’s research focuses on applying the science of learning to enhance educational practice. He is interested in student-focused interventions that involve implementing simple but powerful principles within educational contexts to improve long-term retention and promote deeper understanding. In addition, he is interested in helping teachers to acquire knowledge about how to use principles from the science of learning to improve and expand their pedagogy. Finally, he also investigates how technology can be leveraged to facilitate learning inside and outside of the classroom.

Learning About Complex Systems

Abstract

For several years, I have taught a course on complex systems – systems in which organized patterns emerge from the interactions of many simple parts. This course provides a constructive test case for theories of concept learning because many of the underlying principles are difficult to understand and generalize.

Some of the principles that we have explored are positive and negative feedback loops, decentralization and self-organization, the development of specialized parts, synchronization, evolution and adaptation, and search. These principles and their instantiating algorithms are taught using interactive simulations. I will describe experimental results on students learning transfer and transfer of scientific concepts through interactive simulations, and their implications for embodied cognition, mental models, and how transfer across superficially dissimilar simulations might be fostered.

To understand both the successes and failures of students’ efforts to interpret computer simulations, we have developed a computational model of the process by which human learners discover patterns in natural phenomena. Our approach to modeling how people learn about a system by interacting with it follows three core design principles: 1) perceptual grounding, 2) experimental intervention, and 3) cognitively plausible heuristics for determining relations between simulation elements. An application of the model to the discovery of ideal gas laws will be described.

Biography

Robert Goldstone is Chancellor’s Professor in the Psychological and Brain Sciences department and Cognitive Science program at Indiana University. His research interests include concept learning and representation, perceptual learning, educational applications of cognitive science, decision making, collective behavior, and computational modeling of human cognition. He won the 2000 APA Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology, and a 2004 Troland research award from the National Academy of Sciences. He was the executive editor of Cognitive Science from 2001-2005. He has been elected as a fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (2004), the Cognitive Science Society (2006), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2016).

Catpuring the "Free Range" Learner

Abstract

Today’s digital natives have certain expectations for what they will see in both online and face-to-face learning materials. Yet professors, used to teaching to students trapped willy-nilly in their classrooms for extended blocks of time, often ignore what those students want and need in order to keep their attention on tough material. In this talk, Dr. Oakley sketches practical insights from neuroscience and cognitive psychology that are proven to grab attention and communicate ideas quickly and effectively.

Biography

Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is the Ramón y Cajal Distinguished Scholar of Global Digital Learning at McMaster University. Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she teaches Coursera – UC San Diego’s “Learning How to Learn,” the world’s most popular massive open online course. Her book Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential is a lead title for Penguin in 2017.

Supporting Students and Teachers with the Science of Learning: Challenges and Solutions

Abstract

One goal of cognitive psychologists who apply their research to education is encouraging others to use evidence-based teaching and learning techniques. However, conducting relevant research, presenting it at academic conferences, and publishing it in academic journals is not enough: Researchers must also communicate clearly with education stake-holders for the research findings to be maximally useful to society. In this presentation, I talk about some of my research; but more importantly, I talk about my outreach efforts with the Learning Scientists project, co-founded with Dr. Megan Smith (Rhode Island College) in January 2016. Through this project, we communicate with students and teachers about research, motivating and supporting them to implement recommendations when they study and teach. The project grew from a Twitter account to a blog, free resources in many languages, a forthcoming podcast, and much more. I will discuss the successes and challenges that we have faced with this project.

Biography

Yana Weinstein became an Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2013, having received her PhD in Psychology from University College London and 4 years’ postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis. Yana’s research interests lie in improving student’s test preparation strategies and performance, as well as the judgments students make about their learning. Yana poses questions with direct applied relevance: How can we help students choose optimal study strategies? Why are test scores sometimes surprising to students? And how does retrieval practice help students learn?

Beyond course content: What is learned and how?

Abstract

What do students take away from their postsecondary experience beyond program content? How should we define and measure non-disciplinary skills such as literacy, numeracy, critical thinking, problem solving, communications, interpersonal skills, perseverance? Although the jargon may grate, to the extent that we accept the reality behind terms such as: “workplace ready”, “lifelong learning”, “knowledge economy”, “slash careers”, and “job-hopping,” these products of higher education may be as valuable as content knowledge – they are most certainly regarded as such by potential employers. They are arguably also at the heart of what makes a responsible and effective participant in a civil society.

We need to demonstrate the effectiveness of our programs in these areas by more than anecdote and unsubstantiated argument. But we have only begun to task of defining and assessing these skills, let alone identifying the experiences that foster their growth. Far more questions than answers… Does the cognitive/non-cognitive distinction make sense? What is the difference between basic and advanced cognitive skills? Are non-content skills really transferable? Perhaps most important – to what extent are these skills teachable and learnable, and how do we maximize this process? Much to discuss and to investigate.

Biography

Dr. Greg Moran was a faculty member at Western University from 1977-2015 and served as its provost for 10 years. Greg was provost of Aga Khan University (AKU) from 2011-2015, based in Nairobi. He is currently director, special projects at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario where he is involved in a variety of research and policy activities. In addition, he continues his engagement in research in early child development. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Academics Without Borders, professor emeritus and provost emeritus at Western University, professor (status only) at the University of Toronto, and a visiting professor at Aga Khan University.

Promises and pitfalls of harnessing metacognition to improve student learning

Abstract

To be successful, college students need to do a lot of learning on their own, and such self-regulated learning involves monitoring going progress toward a learning goal and making decisions about how to learn the more difficult concepts and materials. Students do rely on these metacognitive processes to guide their learning, but inaccurate monitoring can lead students to make poor study decisions that will ultimately undermine their performance. Accordingly, I’ll discuss the pitfalls of using metacognition to support self-regulated learning, and as important, I’ll describe some techniques that show promise for improving students’ metacognition and achievement.

Biography

Dr. John Dunlosky is a Professor of Psychology at Kent State University, where he has taught since 2004. He has contributed empirical and theoretical work on memory and metacognition, including theories of self-regulated learning and metacomprehension. Since his post-doctoral training at Georgia Institute of Technology, he has explored people’s metacognitive capabilities and how to improve them. A major aim of his research program is to develop techniques to improve the effectiveness of people’s self-regulated learning across the lifespan. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, he is a founder of the International Association for Metacognition. He co-authored Metacognition, which is the first textbook on the topic, and has edited several books on metacognition and education. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

On noteworthy notes: Not all note taking is created equal

Abstract

Note taking has (at least) two goals. The first goal is to create an external record of content for subsequent reference, and the second goal is to facilitate comprehension and encoding of the material. Unfortunately, these two goals can often be in conflict. For example, students who take verbatim notes tend to have more thorough and accurate external records, but students who summarize content in their own words tend to process information more deeply, which leads to better encoding and comprehension. This leads different media for note taking (e.g. laptops vs. longhand – the former of which allows better verbatim note-taking) to yield different educational outcomes. Moreover, for note-taking strategies that require selective recording of information instead of verbatim transcription – questions arise as to how (and how well) students determine what information to record. This talk explores how students make tradeoffs and determinations about what content to record when note taking.

Biography

Danny Oppenheimer is a professor at UCLA jointly appointed in Psychology and Marketing who studies, among other things, how people make decisions, the psychology of charitable giving, educational assessment, metacognition and the psychological underpinnings of democracy. He is the author of over 40 peer-reviewed articles and the book “Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System that shouldn’t work at all works so well”. He has won awards for research, teaching, and humor, the latter of which is particularly inexplicable given his penchant for truly terrible puns.

Incorporating desirable difficulties into the curriculum enhances student learning: Retrieval, spacing, and interleaving

Abstract

Generating learning activities designed to limit student errors may make students happy and convey a satisfying “sense of knowing,” yet these types of activities may not contribute to ideal learning. Although learning activities designed to challenge learners (what Robert Bjork, 1994, labeled “desirable difficulties”) are likely to increase the frequency of student errors, research informs us that these kinds of activities lead to more deep and enduring learning, retention, and transfer. I will present three strategies designed to yield desirable difficulties that we have implemented in courses at the University of New Hampshire that have benefitted student learning outcomes: Retrieval practice in a course on energy and the environment; spacing of practice in an introductory course on molecular and cellular biology; and interleaving of practice in an introductory statistics course.

Biography

Catherine Overson is the Associate Director of UNH’s Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, Director of Teaching and Learning with Multimedia, and was previously Research Associate on the Center’s Cognition Toolbox program. Her research focuses on the application of science of learning principles to teaching and learning in college and university courses. Catherine is co-editor (with Victor Benassi and Christopher Hakala) of Applying the Science of Learning in Education: Infusing Psychological Science into the Curriculum (2014, STP)

Cognitive mechanisms of desirable difficulties

Abstract

The concept of “desirable difficulty” – the idea that making processing more difficult during learning leads to better memory later on – has become a strong focus for both researchers and practitioners who want to apply cognitive principles to real-life educational settings. One problem with this approach is that predicting which “difficulties” will turn out to be “desirable” (rather than just distracting) is currently very hit-and-miss, and almost completely post-hoc – a “desirable difficulty” is just a label for one of these things that happens to work, not a description of any special category of causal events or mechanisms. Our recent work has tried to take what we know about cognitive control, selective attention, and how different kinds of information is processed in sequence in the brain, to make better predictions about what kinds of task difficulties should produce “desirable” effects on later memory. We suggest that “difficulty” is not a task-wide concept, but has to relate to particular interference effects on specific processing stages. This approach gives many direct predictions about what kinds of task difficulty should help versus hurt memory, that can be directly tested. The implication of these difficulty effects on memory, and more general issues about the potential impact of cognitive manipulations on educational practice, will be discussed.

Biography

Scott Watter is an Associate Professor and current Associate Chair (Undergraduate) in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University. He received a medical degree from the University of Queensland (Australia), and a PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, before joining the McMaster faculty in 2005. His research focuses on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie cognitive control and divided attention performance – the mechanisms and limitations of our brain’s “air traffic control” system that lets us fluently juggle and switch between tasks in everyday life. Applied extensions of this work include studying expertise in video games, medical diagnosis, and business management decision making, and how cognitive control mechanisms can describe everyday attentional events such as mind wandering, multitasking, and mindfulness meditation. His work has been supported by grants and fellowships from NSERC, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Ontario Research Fund (ORF), Mitacs, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH-NIH, USA).

Panel Discussion

And the twain will meet: Combining cognitive science, teaching, and learning + Panel Discussion

Abstract

How can we best harness the fruits of multiple disciplinary labors to cultivate learning? The science of learning encompasses a wide array of disciplines, researchers, and practitioners. Over the last 20 years in particular, educators have had access to a wide realm of research findings all aimed to optimize how instructors teach and students learn. Unfortunately, there is often a large divide between the classroom and the research laboratory. Theory is theory and practice is practice and as in Kipling’s Ballad of East and West, the twain seemed destined never to meet. That has changed as a growing corpus of pedagogical researchers both employs cognitive theory in the classroom but also utilize classroom-based research to inform hypothesizing and theorizing. Consequently, there now exists a large number of pragmatic innovations educators can employ in the classroom to enhance learning. This opening plenary provides a useful heuristic to guide educators as they work to help students learn. I take the best results from a variety of disparate fields and provide a roadmap for effective course design capitalizing on evidence-based practices.

Biography

Regan A. R. Gurung is the Ben J. and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Human Development and Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. He has published articles in a variety of scholarly journals including Psychological Review and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, authored a textbook (Health Psychology: A Cultural Approach) and is also the co-author/co-editor of 12 other books. He is the winner of numerous teaching awards including the CASE Wisconsin Professor of the Year, the UW System Regents Teaching Award, and the UW-Green Bay Founder’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Midwestern Psychological Association. He has served as President of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology and is the newly appointed founding Editor of APA’s journal SoTL in Psychology.

Beyond ROY G BIV: Enhancing memory for course information using mnemonics

Abstract

In order to pursue higher-order learning objectives in their chosen disciplines, students need to acquire basic definitional content as a first scaffold. Particularly at introductory course levels, mnemonics (i.e., memory strategies driven by organization, elaboration, and often visual imagery) have the potential to greatly enhance student learning for this type of information. In this presentation, I will focus on how mnemonics work at a conceptual level, how I have incorporated mnemonics into my own pedagogy (with particular emphasis on memory and metacognitive outcomes of classroom instruction in the keyword method and the method of loci), and what we know about students’ self-reported use and perception of mnemonics from web-based survey research. I will conclude with a broader discussion of the role of mnemonics in higher education, myths and misconceptions about mnemonics, and specific strategies for educators to incorporate mnemonics as impactful learning tools in their courses. Mnemonic training is applicable to many disciplines, and is one way we can support the development of our students’ metacognitive skills, in service of the big-picture goal that they will be successful self-regulated learners.

Biography

Jennifer A. McCabe is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD. Her scholarly interests include memory strategies, metacognition/metamemory, and pedagogical techniques. Her research has been published in Memory and Cognition, Teaching of Psychology, Instructional Science, and Psychology and Aging. She has received two Instructional Resource Awards from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, and was recently name a Consulting Editor for Teaching of Psychology. In 2007, she won the Edward G. Harness Outstanding Educator award from Marietta College.

Imaging the reading brain in children and adults

Abstract

There is no one “reading region” of the brain. Instead, we read words by coordinating multiple regions of the brain that are specialized for letter recognition, speech processing and semantic knowledge, along with vision and attention. My lab’s research has been studying the inner workings of this reading network using a range of behavioural and neuroimaging techniques, across a range of populations. My talk will discuss a few of our recent findings in which we are using eyetracking and ERPs to examine the time course of reading, especially as it relates to recognizing the phonological forms of visual words. These studies provide a novel window into how children and adults decode written words, and how this might differ in children with reading disorders. We are also using fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to localize sub-regions of the brain’s reading network, both in skilled readers as well as in a patient with pure alexia.

Biography

Dr. Marc Joanisse is a Professor and Faculty Scholar at the University of Western Ontario, where he is a member of the Psychology department as well as Western’s Brain and Mind Institute. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California. His research examines the cognitive and brain bases of language and reading; his work spans a range of populations and techniques, but focuses on the study of developmental dyslexia in children, using both behavioural and neuroimaging techniques. He serves on the editorial board at the Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology and has previously served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research. His research has been funded by the NSERC and CIHR in Canada, and by the National Institutes of Health in the USA.

Using local and provincial data to examine the influence of schools on student mental health and achievement

Abstract

Over the past 30 years, substantial changes have occurred in the demographic and economic conditions of Ontario, including unparalleled levels of immigration, growth of visible minorities and non-English speaking populations and steady increases in discrimination, income inequality and concentrated poverty in neighbourhoods. Little is known, however, about the impact of these changes on child and youth mental health and academic achievement. Moreover, we have very little evidence that characterizes the mental health and academic needs of immigrant and visible minority children and youth – populations that are now growing rapidly in numbers, appear to be at elevated risk for exposure to poverty and are often under-represented in general population studies. To fill these evidence gaps, we are conducting two province wide studies: the 2014 Ontario Child Health Study (2014 OCHS) and the School Mental Health Surveys (SMHS), and recently completed a local study of 1,450 immigrant and non-immigrant youth attending 36 schools in Hamilton. The presentation will focus on the SMHS and our local, Hamilton Youth Study, and will present evidence that examines the role of schools on student mental health and achievement.

Biography

Kathy Georgiades is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neuroscience and the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University. She holds the David R. (Dan) Offord Chair in Child Studies and is supported by a CIHR New Investigator Award. Her program of research examines the nature, causes and effective responses to reducing inequalities in child and youth mental health and academic achievement. Emphasis is placed on specific populations (i.e., children and youth from immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds) and specific contexts (i.e., schools) where interventions can be implemented to reduce inequalities. She is currently co-leading to province wide studies –the 2014 Ontario Child Health Study and the School Mental Health Surveys –that will provide up-to-date evidence on the mental health needs and service utilization patterns of children and youth in Ontario.

The prevalence and consequences of mind wandering during live undergraduate lectures

Abstract

Across two semesters of a second-year undergraduate course we examined students’ mind wandering and how levels of mind wandering relate to short-term retention and long-term test performance. We assessed frequency, intentionality and depth of students’ mind wandering by periodically presenting thought probes during almost every lecture. Student responses to these probes were collected using iClicker electronic response devices. We assessed learning by including multiple-choice quiz questions at the end of each class and by obtaining students’ midterm test scores. Contrary to commonly held views derived from laboratory studies, we found that (1) unintentional mind-wandering rates were strikingly low, (2) mind-wandering rates did not increase as time progressed during a lecture, and (3) mind-wandering was only minimally related to midterm test performance.

Biography

Dr. Daniel Smilek is an Associate Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Smilek’s research focuses on uncovering the basic mechanisms of human attention, with a specific focus on sustained attention, attention lapses and mind wandering. Dr. Smilek has coauthored an undergraduate textbook on human cognition and over one hundred peer-reviewed research articles, some of which have appeared in top journals such as Nature,Psychological Science and Cognition. In recent years Dr. Smilek has extended his work on human attention to address problems with driver inattention in the transportation industry and to address student inattention in educational settings.

Two solitudes: Bringing the scientists and the scholars of teaching and learning together + Panel Discussion

Abstract

It takes little time in the field to recognize that people who are passionate about postsecondary education (and education in general) fall neatly into two camps. Like Cronbach’s “two disciplines of scientific psychology” (1957), they have different qualifications, go to different meetings, publish in different journals and have different standards of scholarship. I will call them the “Scientists” and the “Scholars”. The labels are not mine;, the “S” in SoTL (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) is not the same as the S in SOL-SOI (Science of Learning – Science of Instruction).

Scholars are a diverse bunch, from nearly every discipline on the campus, united by a common passion about teaching and a desire to enrich the learning experience. By and large (but of course with some exceptions), they have no particular methodological skills or interest in advancing the research enterprise. Instead, they simply want to share their experiences to enhance the educational experience. By contrast, the Scientists are a much more homogeneous group. Almost all have postgraduate training in psychology – educational or cognitive. Indeed, the teacher is almost never identified as an important variable in their research publications. Their interest is in curriculum and instruction, not teaching, and they view postsecondary education to apply some of their theories to practical problems.

What is not recognized is a mutual need. The Scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that many of their strategies, although simple and often counter-intuitive, can have dramatic effects on learning with very little investment of time and money. But the demonstrations are almost without exception occurring within the same psychology department that spawned the research. Conversely, the Scholars genuinely desire to make education more effective, but often lack the tools to achieve this.

There is one area where there is a meeting of the minds. Within health sciences education, there is long tradition of scholarship, including active research and publications, in education. Qualitative and quantitative researchers happily coexist, publishing in the same journals and attending the same meetings. Moreover the journals cover the gamut from theory to practice and the meetings are viewed as an opportunity for sharing between researchers and practitioners. In this talk, I will attempt to dissect this phenomenon, now a half century old, to help bring the two solitudes in postsecondary education together.

Biography

Geoff Norman’s academic interests focus on the psychology of expertise particularly as applied to expert clinicians. His research is focused on the psychology of clinical reasoning, particularly in the relative contribution of rapid processing based on prior experience (so-called pattern recognition) and analytical rules, and educational strategies to improve reasoning. Additionally, he has strengths and interests in measurement and statistics. Other research interests include methods of student assessment, and psychometric methods.

Blending instincts, practice and research to create constructive interactions

Abstract

The university is a place of wonderful possibilities for teaching and learning for students and instructors alike. Intuitive practice based on experience and self-reflection may lead to good teaching and learning outcomes, however examining the practices of others and incorporating results of research enhance the possibilities for improving the student and instructor experiences.

In reflections on over 15 years of leading University courses, significant changes in teaching and learning climate and practice will be presented from one instructor’s perspective, with a focus on changing classroom experiences. While the classroom is by no means the only place where learning may take place, it is habitually used as an educational space. Guided by key questions such as “In the age of ‘online’, what is the value added in face-to-face contact?”, this journey will follow the implementation of an instructional team model in a large multi-section course, experimenting with interactive engagement activities, peer-peer teaching and a flipped classroom, and the transformation of a large Introductory Chemistry course to a flipped classroom course supported by blended learning.

This presentation will examine some of the useful activities that can take place in a classroom, with a focus on incorporating evidence-based best practices to engage students, support learning and support students and instructors in their experience together. When areas of instincts, practice and research meet, beautiful reactions can take place, and constructive interactions are built in the intersections of these spaces.

Biography

Over the past seven years, Pippa Lock has developed a strong and well-deserved reputation as an outstanding professor in the Department of Chemistry. She excels in the classroom and her teaching evaluations are consistently the highest in the department. Pippa Lock loves the challenge of making the abstract concepts of chemistry come alive for first-year students. The assistant professor’s approach to teaching and learning is so effective that she has been named a 3M National Teaching Fellow for 2014, an honour announced February 2013 by 3M Canada and The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Lock’s introduction-to-chemistry classes are big on interaction and participation, and even include skits where students act out chemical equations. Whatever it takes to foster knowledge and love for the subject, Lock is ready to try it, whether with large groups or in smaller sessions with Integrated Science students. Lock is one of 10 educators across Canada to be named fellows for 2014, joining 13 McMaster faculty members to have been named previously to the honour since it was created in 1986.

3M Panel Discussion

Remembering the past to imagine the future: Functions of episodic memory

Abstract

Studies of memory have mainly examined how we remember past experiences, but an important function of memory is to allow individuals to simulate or imagine future scenarios. A rapidly growing number of studies have shown that simulating future events depends on much of the same neural and cognitive machinery as does remembering past events. This presentation will review some of these findings, and focus in particular on the role of episodic memory, a system that supports recollections of past personal experiences, in constructing simulations of future or hypothetical events. The talk will consider both pitfalls and adaptive aspects of episodic memory and simulation in the context of research on planning, prediction, empathy, problem solving, and the interconnected set of brain regions known as the default network.

Biography

Daniel Schacter is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. Schacter received his PhD in 1981 at the University of Toronto, and remained there until 1987, when he moved to the Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona. In 1991, he joined the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, and served as chair of the department from 1995-2005. Schacter’s research has explored the distinction between explicit and implicit forms of memory, the nature of memory distortion, how individuals use memory to imagine possible future events, the effects of aging on memory, and more recently, enhancing learning from lectures. He has published over 350 articles and chapters on these and related topics, and has received a number of awards for this research, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Warren Medal from the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association, and election to the National Academy of Sciences. Many of Schacter’s ideas are summarized in his 1996 book, Searching for Memory, and his 2001 book, The Seven Sins of Memory, both named as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and both winners of the American Psychological Association’s William James Book Award.

The power of relearning: If at first you do succeed, try, try again

Abstract

Spaced practice and retrieval practice are two highly robust techniques for promoting long-term learning. A particularly potent combination of these two techniques. My talk will focus on a particularly potent combination of these two techniques—referred to as successive relearning—and I’ll present data illustrating how this combination can support durable and efficient student learning.

Biography

Katherine Rawson earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at University of Colorado and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Kent State University. Her research program includes two interrelated areas of research: One area explores how to optimize learning in educationally relevant domains, with current emphasis on strategies that promote the durability and efficiency of student learning, the mechanisms underlying these effects, and the self-regulatory processes that support such learning. The other area explores the cognitive processes involved in skill acquisition, with a particular interest in mechanisms underlying the automatization of reading processes.

Does number sense matter?

Abstract

Mounting evidence has demonstrated the existence of a system for the representation of numerical magnitude that is shared between species, can be detected very early in development and is associated neuronal activation of the parietal cortex. In view of this evidence, greater attention has been paid to roles played by basic number processing (also frequently referred to as ‘number sense’) in the typical and atypical development of mathematical skills. In this talk, I will discuss evidence from a series of behavioral and brain imaging studies that have examined the developmental trajectories of basic number processing and their relationship to the ontogeny of mathematical skills. I will demonstrate that individual differences in numerical magnitude comparison abilities are related to variability in children’s mathematical skills in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. Finally, I will discuss data that suggests that not all measures of ‘number sense’ relate to mathematical achievement equally and that it is important to move beyond a unified construct of basic number processing and towards a differentiated, multi-level model of the typical and atypical development of numerical magnitude processing and its relationship to the learning of arithmetic.

Biography

Daniel Ansari is a Full Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. has been Canada Research Chair in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, where he heads the Numerical Cognition Laboratory (www.numericalcognition.org). Ansari and his team explore the developmental trajectory underlying both the typical and atypical development of numerical and mathematical skills, using both behavioral and neuroimaging methods. He serves as an Associate Editor of the peer-reviewed journals, PLoS ONE, Developmental Science and Mind, Brain and Education. In 2009 Ansari received the ‘Early Career Contributions’ Award from the Society for Research in Child Development and in 2011 he was awarded the Boyd McCandless Early Researcher Award from the Developmental Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association. Currently, Daniel Ansari is the president-elect of the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES).

Applying cognitive principles to promote multimedia learning across diverse groups

Abstract

Educational technology provides exciting new possibilities for communicating information in engaging and efficient ways. Indeed, PowerPoint slideware has become the most popular instructional tool with an estimated one million PowerPoint presentations taking place each hour. Web-based instruction has also become a primary medium for delivering course content, with increasing numbers of institutions developing online courses. My talk will present research investigating optimal presentation design strategies to promote student learning. It will include lab-based evidence demonstrating the importance of designing presentations based on a scientific understanding of human memory and attention. I will also explore the unique role of working memory in predicting the efficacy of design strategies across diverse age groups. My goal is to inspire critical thinking of instructional design and to highlight the importance of considering cognitive limitations to create effective presentations.

Biography

Barbara Fenesi is currently a Ph.D. student at McMaster University in the Applied Cognition in Education Lab. Her research examines effective instructional design strategies across a wide range of learners, with particular interest in application to classroom instruction and online course design. Current projects include investigating the optimal text and image combinations in multimedia instruction that promote meaningful learning and accurate metacognitive awareness. She also examines the effectiveness of educational technology across the lifespan and considers individual differences in cognitive aptitude to determine the most effective instructional design across diverse learning abilities. The ultimate goal of this research program is to translate optimal instructional technology for consumption by both younger and older learners.

Using spacing to boost retention in the classroom

Abstract

The spacing effect is the phenomenon by which placing gaps between learning episodes improves retention on a later test. Recent lab-based research has demonstrated that providing spacing between learning episodes can double long-term retention a year later, when an optimal gap is provided. Less clear is the degree to which the spacing effect will survive implementation in real-world classrooms, which contain increased noise from sources such as visual and auditory distractions and missed class periods. We have run three classroom-based studies, all of which demonstrate an educationally meaningful spacing effect benefit, albeit an effect of reduced magnitude compared to laboratory studies. This line of research provides initial evidence that teachers should make deliberate use of the spacing effect when organizing curriculum units and choosing frequency of testing. Larger scale classroom trials should be conducted to provide evidence that a wide range of teachers can learn how to properly implement spacing effect interventions, and a wider range of spacing manipulations should be investigated.

Biography

Melody Wiseheart is a cognitive developmental psychologist at York University. She specializes in educational psychology, including methods for optimizing learning and translation of laboratory memory research to real-world classroom environments. Her primary spacing effect publications examine the interaction between study episode timing and retention interval, and related lines of research demonstrate the importance of corrective feedback during the learning process and use of retrieval practice during learning to boost later retention.

Taming the wondering mind: Improving attention and learning during lectures

Abstract

Students often find it difficult to sustain attention during classroom lectures. As a result, considerable amounts of class time can be spent engaged in bouts of mind wandering, a mental experience known to get in the way of effective learning. Hence, the development of interventions that can be used to help students maintain focus in the classroom should be of considerable interest. In this talk, I will present data from a series of recent experiments demonstrating that attention to and learning from lectures can be considerably improved with the use of interpolated memory tests. Specifically, I will discuss the benefits of interpolating lectures with memory tests on the occurrence of mind wandering, note taking, and test performance. Next, I will present data indicating that the timing of interpolated tests can influence their effectiveness in improving attention and learning. Finally, I will present results from a recent brain imaging study that provides new insights into the manner in which brain networks involved in attention, cognitive control, and introspective thought interact with one another in the context of learning from lectures. I will conclude by outlining the development of new research that will bring brain imaging techniques into the classroom in order to bridge the gap between laboratory research and learning in the classroom.

Biography

Dr. Karl Szpunar (B.Sc., University of Toronto at Mississauga, 2003; Ph.D, Washington University in St. Louis, 2009; postdoc, Rotman Research Institute, 2010) is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University where he is working with Dr. Daniel Schacter on developing novel research paradigms to help unravel the cognitive and neural underpinnings of factors that promote and/or obstruct effective learning in lecture settings. Dr. Szpunar has published over 30 articles and chapters on the topic of human memory, and was recently recognized with an early career award from the Association for Psychological Science. In 2015, Dr. Szpunar will be joining the Department of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago as an Assistant Professor.

Werewolves of learning: Transforming a large blended-class into a "fully online" beast

Abstract

There is currently a push in Ontario for professors to consider transforming their classes into ones that fit with the Ontario Online University notion, and in Fall 2013 I agreed to do so with my Introduction to Psychology class. Doing so required augmenting our use of peerScholar with the creation of two new tools; Digital Labcoat and mTuner. In my talk I will describe what a “fully online” course looks like, I will highlight the tools we use and the literature they are based on, and then I will present some of the research we have conducted within the class context to assess both efficacy and satisfaction. As such, the overall talk will demonstrate how my class has, in many respects, become my lab and how such an arrangement can result in a positive and synergistic relationship with the students.

Biography

Professor Joordens is a Cognitive Psychologist with research specialization in Memory and Consciousness, and with more recent interests in Educational Psychology. He has been a faculty member at the University of Toronto Scarborough since 1995 and has taught a wide range of courses including Memory and Cognition, Statistics, WikiScholar and, most recently, their 1900 student Introduction to Psychology class, a course he has transformed into a “fully online” course making heavy use of blended learning and evidence-based educational technologies created by himself and his students. In the spring of 2013 he mounted a Massive Open Online Course (i.e., MOOC) entitled Introduction to Psychology, hosted by Coursera, and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. With over 60,000 students registered, and 15,000 regularly active, he employed all of the educational technologies created in his lab (i.e., peerScholar, mTuner and Digital Labcoat) to provide a rich and warm educational experienced that exercised cognitive skills while imparting knowledge.

Interleaving mediates individual differences in working memory capacity when learning statistical concepts

Abstract

Working Memory (WM) is a limited capacity cognitive construct that allows individuals to select and attend to goal-relevant information during distraction, and coordinate this incoming information with pre-existing knowledge from long-term memory. WM is a critical component in education research as individual differences in WM limitations influence the effectiveness of classroom interventions. My talk will focus on one such intervention, namely the interleaving effect, which states that interleaving exemplars of to-be-learned concepts, rather than blocking exemplars by concept, enhances learning. Moreover, I argue that when interleaving is available, the question is not simply if it is effective, but effective for whom, when, and why?I present evidence to demonstrate that interleaving is beneficial or detrimental depending on whether the primary task is to discriminate between exemplars of different concepts or to encode commonalities of exemplars within concepts, respectively. Importantly, I demonstrate how individual differences in WM can produce variability in the magnitude of the interleaving effect on learning of statistical concepts.

Biography

Faria Sana is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour at McMaster University. Her general research interests are in learning and memory within educational contexts, with the over arching goal to promote connections between basic cognitive research and educational practice. Building on cognitive theories of learning, she examines how cognitive processes influence encoding, long-term retention and successful retrieval of complex information. Currently, she is studying how individuals process and encode non-parametric statistics concepts in order to correctly recognize and categorize novel word-problems.

Improving Student Success: Some Principles from Cognitive Science

Abstract

Students are expected to learn a great deal of information, and as they progress from grade school to college, they are increasingly responsible for guiding their learning outside of class. Thus, students could benefit from easy-to-use strategies that support durable and efficient learning. I’ll discuss which strategies students believe are the best and which ones they use the most, and I’ll describe a variety of promising strategies that they should use. Although these principles from cognitive science are not a panacea for every learning challenge, they provide robust tools that will improve student success across many domains.

Biography

Dr. John Dunlosky is a Professor of Psychology at Kent State University, where he has taught since 2004. He has contributed empirical and theoretical work on memory and metacognition, including theories of self-regulated learning and metacomprehension. Since his post-doctoral training at Georgia Institute of Technology, he has explored people’s metacognitive capabilities and how to improve them. A major aim of his research program is to develop techniques to improve the effectiveness of people’s self-regulated learning across the lifespan. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, he is a founder of the International Association for Metacognition. He co-authored Metacognition, which is the first textbook on the topic, and has edited several books on metacognition and education. He also serves as an Associate Editor for the Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.

Panel Discussion #1

Mending metacognitive illusions: What does it take?

Biography

Dr. Robert A. Bjork(BA, mathematics, University of Minnesota; PhD, Psychology, Stanford University) is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and the self-regulation of learning. He has served as Editor of Memory & Cognition and Psychological Review, as well as co-founding Editor of Psychological Science in the Public Interest and Chair of the National Research Council’s Committee on Techniques for the Enhancement of Human Performance. He is a past president or chair of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), the Western Psychological Association (WPA), the Psychonomic Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Council of Editors of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, and the Department of Psychology at UCLA. He is a recipient of UCLA’s Distinguished Teaching Award, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientist Lecturer and Distinguished Service to Psychological Science Awards, and the American Physiological Society’s Claude Bernard Distinguished Lecturership Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and his is a recipient of the Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Retrieval Practice Improves Learning: Evidence from Applied Research in Middle and High Schools

Abstract

Over the course of a eight-year project with more than 1,500 middle and high school students, extensive research has revealed that retrieval practice in authentic classroom settings improves long-term learning. We review our applied research findings and discuss our development of a retrieval practice implementation tool for teachers.

Biography

Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal is a public servant, dedicated to bridging the gaps between education, teaching, research, and policy. Currently, Dr. Agarwal is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Washington University in St. Louis, conducting memory research at local middle and high schools. She recently served as Illinois’s Director of K-12 Assessment, responsible for assessment development and administration for 2,000,000 students, implementation of a new statewide growth model, design of Illinois’s new accountability system, and management of a $43 million budget. Dr. Agarwal has teaching experience at elementary, middle, high school, and university levels, policy experience at the U.S. Department of Education and The College Board, and 10 years of experience in human learning and memory research.

Correcting student misconceptions: Linking the Laboratory and the Classroom

Biography

Dr. Elizabeth Marsh received her B.A. in Psychology from Drew University and her Ph.D. from Stanford University, where she worked with Dr. Gordon Bower and Dr. Barbara Tversky. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Washington University in St. Louis, working with Dr. Henry L. Roediger, III. Dr. Marsh is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, where she has been on faculty since 2003. Dr. Marsh’s research interests span the field of human memory, and include autobiographical memory, memory errors, and student learning.

Tasks Desirably Difficult vs. Reducing Extraneous Cognitive Load

Abstract

Two paradigms that have been used to facilitate student learning appear to be at odds with each other. The desirable difficulties paradigm aims to increase difficulty in learning materials to enhance long-term retention. The Cognitive Load Theory aims to reduce extraneous load by making tasks less difficult to enhance learning. In this talk, I discuss how these two approaches might be reconciled while also discussing the current state of educational research.

Biography

Dr. Dan Robinson is Director and Professor of the School of Education at Colorado State University. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in 1993 from the University of Nebraska where he majored in both learning/cognition and statistics/research. Dr. Robinson has served as the editor of Educational Psychology Review since 2006. He is incoming Associate Editor of the Journal of Educational Psychology and has served as an editorial board member of nine refereed international journals. He has published over 100 articles, books, and book chapters, presented over 100 papers at research conferences, and taught over 100 college courses. His research interests include educational technology innovations that may facilitate learning, team-based approaches to learning, and examining trends in articles published in various educational journals and societies. Dr. Robinson’s scholarship has been recognized both nationally and internationally. He was named as one of the most published authors in educational psychology journals from 1991-1996, 1997-2002, 1991-2002, and 2003-2008, Contemporary Educational Psychology, 1998, 2004, 2010.

Dual Processing Models in Medical Diagnosis: The Advantage of Thinking Fast over Slow

Abstract

Perhaps as a result of the popularity of Kahneman’s bestselling book, Thinking Fast and Slow, dual – processing models, which are ubiquitous in psychology, have achieved fame (or perhaps notoriety) as a model of clinical diagnostic reasoning. Although many applications of dual processing to psychology are explanatory, with no evident superiority of automatic or analytical processing, the particular model espoused by Kahneman, a so-called “default interventionist” model, postulates a clear superiority of analytical over automatic reasoning. However, the evidence for the superiority of analytical reasoning in everyday reasoning tasks is derived from the longstanding research program of Tversky and Kahneman, where special cases were devised to “trick” everyday reasoning. It remains to be seen whether everyday judgment is as inadequate as claimed in a more representative task domain.

This theoretical framework has been exported more or less intact into medical diagnosis by Croskerry and a number of others, who claim unequivocally that diagnostic errors originate from cognitive biases related to System 1 (non-analytical) reasoning and are corrected (or not) by System 2 (analytical reasoning). Surprisingly the evidence for these assertions is essentially absent. By contrast, I, and others, have conducted a series of studies showing that analytical reasoning has minimal or no effect on diagnostic accuracy. Implications for education will be discussed.

Biography

Dr. Geoff Norman is Professor of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University. He received a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from McMaster University in 1971, and subsequently a M.A. in educational psychology form Michigan State University in 1977. He is the author of 10 books in education, measurement and statistics, and 300 journal articles. His primary research interest is in cognitive psychology applied to problems of learning and reasoning. He has won numerous awards, including the Hubbard Award from the National Board of Medical Examiners in 1989, the Award of Excellence of the Canadian Association for Medical Education in 1997, the Distinguished Scholar Award of the American Educational Research Association, Division I, in 2000, the Award for Outstanding Achievement of the Medical Council of Canada in 2001.

He presently holds a Canada Research Chair. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2007. In 2008, he won the prestigious Karolinska Prize for lifetime achievement in medical education research. He received an honorary degree from Erasmus University in 2010. In 2012, he was appointed the Querido Chair at Erasmus University.

Panel Discussion #2