Teaching Students to Teach Themselves 

 

Abstract: When children start school, it is completely up to the teacher to see to it that students learn. But as they grow older, they become increasingly responsible for their own learning. They must learn how to read complicated texts independently, and not just for comprehension, but to remember the contents. They must learn to avoid distraction, commit content to memory, take notes, judge when they have studied enough, avoid procrastination, and more. Studies show that most college students use very inefficient strategies for most of these tasks. In this talk I will summarize research from the last twenty years on a subset of these tasks, focusing on practical applications that can be communicated to students so that they can regulate their learning more efficiently.

When: Friday, April 26, 2024

Where: 307 Science and Engineering Research Facility (SERF)

What Time: 3:30-5:00 pm

Dan Willingham received his PhD from Harvard University in cognitive psychology and is now a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-16 education. He is the author of several books, including Outsmart Your Brain and Raising Kids Who Read. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science.