|
The educational stakes have been raised. Every generation needs more advanced education than the one that came before. Advances in technology are fueling the phenomenal economic growth that the US is experiencing, and our ability to remain competitive and cooperative with other countries in the world depends on a technologically-literate work force. We need instructional designs that maximize transfer to the real world, enhance critical thinking abilities, and encourage the habit of life-long learning. Thus, it would seem that the academic scientists who teach the principles of research and evidence-based decision-making would be using laboratory findings that show how to improve learning, problem solving, long-term retention, and transfer of training, and to monitor and direct the way learners build cognitive models of complex phenomena. Instead, virtually all college faculty teach the way they were taught. In fact, it would be difficult to design an educational model that is more at odds with current research on human cognition than the one that is used in most colleges and universities and in workplace and other settings where adults engage in formal learning activities. How can we apply and extend our knowledge of how people think, learn, and remember to improve college-level learning in the university and beyond? Outcomes. Tangible outcomes from this initiative will be (1) an integrated summary of the proceedings, which will include a review of "what we already know," (2) a research agenda for both applied and basic research along with a plan for assessing the effectiveness of educational innovations, and (3) an annotated bibliography by topical area (4) prototypes to test our plans to redesign higher education.
Download a copy of "Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond: Teaching for Longterm Retention and Transfer" by Diane F. Halpern and Milton D. Hakel published in the 2003 July/August issue of Change magazine.
|
