Student Learning and Thinking
Bill Cerbin,
Ph. D.
Director of the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning and
Professor of Psychology
184 Wing Technology Center
608.785.6881
wcerbin@uwlax.edu
Overview
Exploring
How Students Learn
●
Brief Interventions that Improve Achievement
●
Learning Styles Don't Exist
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Test Enhanced Learning
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Helping Students to Study More Effectively
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Learning From Examples
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Reducing Student Test Anxiety
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Metacognition?
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Motivating College Student Learning
CATL provides opportunities for instructors to explore
student learning and thinking through workshops, lesson studies, web-based
resources, and participation in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Goals
Our goal is to help instructors use knowledge of learning
and thinking to improve their instruction. By understanding how students
learn, instructors can make more informed decisions about how to support student
learning and thinking.
Activities and Resources
CATL Workshops. Many CATL workshops
focus on understanding how students learn and the implications for instruction. See the
CATL Calendar for descriptions and registration
information.
Lesson Study. Since 2003 more than 130 UW-L instructors
have participated in lesson studies to explore teaching and learning in their
own classes. In a lesson study several instructors jointly design, teach,
observe, analyze, and refine a single class lesson. The purpose is to
examine how students learn in the context of a single lesson, and to improve
instruction accordingly. The College Lesson Study Project, based at UW-La
Crosse trains and supports college teachers to use lesson study to improve their
teaching and student learning. In 2011-2012,
six teams of
instructors from Economics, English, Environmental Studies, Radiation Therapy,
Political Science, and Psychology engaged in lesson studies in their classes.
For more information, visit the Lesson
Study Project website and the
College Lesson Study blog.
Multimedia Resources. I maintain two collections of resources related to college student learning. Exploring How Students Learn and the Student Learning Blog include articles, videos, PowerPoint presentations and references on a wide variety of topics including: the role of feedback in learning, test-enhanced learning, peer learning, test anxiety, metacognition, motivation for learning, learning from examples and demonstrations, and more.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Consultation is available for instructors who would like feedback or assistance in any phase of classroom research—planning, data collection, analysis, and publication. For more information about SoTL see Classroom Inquiry: An online tutorial and the UW-System Leadership Site for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.