LTGR Ep. #66 – “The Science of Learning”
To kick off their fourth year of the LTGreenRoom podcast, Susan and Dan explore the science of learning.
Download MP3 File
Show Notes:
The highlights of this episode include:
Susan reviews Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School? She picks out the highlights of the importance of background knowledge and making meaning.
Dan relates this to Bernice McCarthy’s 4MAT System. He asks about relevancy. Again, meaning is an aspect, along with questions such as what, why, and how.
Dan also read The Book of Learning and Forgetting by Frank Smith, and Susan read The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein.
From blogs, Dan gets a sense of new directions emerging in the field of learning. A recent USA Today article summarized three dimensions learning is computational, learning is social, and learning is driven by brain circuitry.
Also, a blog concerning what makes an expert’s brain different came from Connie Malamed, author of Visual Learning. Experts become more efficient when face with new problems because they can rule out paths not worth exploring because of their experiences.
All this leads to a sidebar about the struggle of teaching straight content. And that is where Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer do an exemplary job in their text, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction. That book and Connie Malamed’s are on Kineo’s Back to School Reading List at William Horton’s Elearning by Design. Also on the list is Michael Allen’s Guide to eLearning.
Listeners, we’d love to hear what you’re reading and thinking about the science of learning. Please share insights and examples, too! Continue the discussion by posting at ltgreenroom.org or talk to us in LearningTimes! We facilitate discussion in LearningTimes.org or call us at 1-800-609-9006 x8055 (US and Canada) or 678-255-2174 x8055 (outside US and Canada).
