Learning requires effort and is often difficult, but the exact relationship between learning, effort, and difficulty is complex and often misunderstood by both teachers
Author note: This essay is meant to be a bit tongue in cheek. Just to be clear: I am not advocating for academic dishonesty.
<p
I’m a professor of psychology, and I’ve taught courses in behavioral statistics and research methods my entire career. No one decides to major in
One of the strongest predictors of how easily and well a person will learn a topic is their prior knowledge about it. The more one
When my son was growing up, my wife and I bought memberships at the local science museum so we could take him there any time
No faculty member sets out to be a bad teacher—at least I hope not—but there are bad (or ineffective) teachers. I’m sure some of these
Psychology programs at large, research-focused universities often ask me to provide an external evaluation for a faculty member on a teaching-track faculty who are being
Psychologists and educators have studied learning for well over 100 years, and we still don’t know the specific conditions that result in learning. If we
When I was in graduate school, I had to pass four written preliminary exams over various subject areas in psychology. Each exam was three hours
Like many college faculty, my first teaching experience was in graduate school. I was woefully unprepared to teach but blissfully ignorant of that fact. I
