Deep and Durable Learning

Send us Fan Mail The purpose of exploration is to shake things up—to encounter new ideas which may initially be puzzling but which may hold the key to answering the compelling questions you care about.

Send us Fan Mail Focused exploration is the third disposition of Learner's Mind. Exploration need not be time inefficient. We explore the story of Watson and Crick in their pursuit of the structure of DNA. This is an example of the power of exploration to quickly solve a problem that appeared insoluble.

Send us Fan Mail Developing Learner's Mind requires an openness to and a curiosity about the world around you. Curiosity is manifested by a willingness to pay attention to what exploration uncovers followed by the cultivation of perception through which you really start to listen.

Send us Fan Mail Learner's mind begins with curiosity and curiosity begins with paying attention to the world around you. Paying attention broadens options and leads to better conclusions. Learn how to cultivate attention.

Send us Fan Mail Caring about students means prioritizing their needs as learners. This includes centering courses on a manageable number of core concepts as well as considering prior knowledge and what role the course will play in their future learning. Students need to participate actively without fear that their contributions will cause them to be judged.

Send us Fan Mail Great courses are designed to engage the curiosity of students. In this episode Dr. David Gardenghi explains how he roots his chemistry for engineers course in the central engineering problem of corrosion.

Send us Fan Mail Dr. Amy Tuck teaches the functioning of the human immune system through a logically connected narrative. Immunity is due to an intricately interconnected multilevel system designed to assure our survival in a hostile world. Listen as Dr. Tuck shares her strategy for creating deep and durable learning that answers real life application questions.

Send us Fan Mail The Summer Institute in Teaching Science (SITS) is a four summer program of ten weeks per summer. The aim of SITS is to transform discipline-specific knowledge experts into effective teachers who are able to take their knowledge apart to create an optimal path for learning. In this episode recent SITS graduate, Dr. David McKinney, reflects on his personal transformation through SI...

Send us Fan Mail The 7C's of Cognition: Curiosity, Conceptualization, Connectivity, Constrained Capacity, Chunking, Consolidation, and Creativity. Creating Coherence.

Send us Fan Mail Your brain is never off duty. While your body sleeps your brain actively and purposefully retrieves prior knowledge to sharpen it and harmonize it with new learning through the process of consolidation.

Send us Fan Mail Learning is sabotaged when the cognitive load of the task is too high as well as when it is too low. Learn how to optimize cognitive load.

Send us Fan Mail Chunking removes the obstacle of our extremely limited working memory by leveraging the hard-wired pattern making of the brain to create networks of powerful, logically-linked concepts.

Send us Fan Mail The brain ruthlessly discards information, but relentless forgetting allows us to remain flexible as learners. 

Send us Fan Mail New concepts don’t float around but are logically negotiated into an appropriate place in our mental framework of concepts.

Send us Fan Mail The process of concept (idea) formation in the brain is the universal mechanism for learning with understanding.

Send us Fan Mail Curiosity is essential and is the foundation of learning.

Send us Fan Mail Knowledge of the human brain enables us to optimize learning. Exploring the 7 C's of Cognition.

Send us Fan Mail There is currently a mood of dismissal and even denigration of experts. "Strongly held opinions should be granted the status of facts," say some laypeople. This episode explains why learning requires transformative expertise outside oneself.

Send us Fan Mail Educational curricula are obsessed with information. Rigor means more information is covered. Learn how to overcome the systemic prioritization of information over real knowing.

Send us Fan Mail Knowledge requires a human knower. A person can be said to know something when they believe it to be true and they can justify that belief using reason and evidence.

Send us Fan Mail Information and Knowledge are not the same thing. Learning is much more than collecting information! Join me as we explore how data is used to create information and information is used by human knowers to create knowledge.

Send us Fan Mail Information is readily available, but so is misinformation. Don't believe everything you see on your screen.  Actively resist your native  confirmation bias that shops for prepackaged opinions that square with your preconceptions/tribe. Learning requires intellectual humility that assumes a willingness to be taught.

Send us Fan Mail An introduction to the concept that guides this podcast: enbling deep learning because it is intrinsically durable.