The goal of university teaching is achieve optimum learning for “all” students. At the same time, this poses the greatest challenge. Optimum learning is not necessarily reflected by good grades but by the integration of new knowledge in the students’ own understanding. Students who learn optimally also concern themselves with the course topics taught when they are outside the course as well, and they connect them up with the knowledge they already have and with their daily lives.
A high cognitive load can make learning more laborious. Countless studies have looked into what causes cognitive load and how it can be minimised. What they have revealed is that less is often more.…
It’s not always easy for students to follow what their professors are saying, because experts not only speak their own language but think differently too. A look at expertise research reveals why that is…
In the fourth series of our podcast, Birgit Hawelka is talking to Magdalena Abel about the topic of retrieval practice. To summarise briefly, this is a teaching strategy where you use the process of…
Opinions differ as to whether lectures are sensible or nonsense. In the discussion, it is often ignored that it is not so much the format of the class that supports or hinders students’ learning…
