Teaching Excellence Workshops: Overcoming Apathy and How Students Learn
Todd Zakrajsek, Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Monday, February 28, 2011, 9:00 - 11:15 and 12:05 - 1:25
Center for Teaching Excellence, Thomas Cooper Library, Room L511
Thomas Cooper Library, Level 2, Room L204
Description
This two-part workshop series focuses on practical strategies to increase student engagement that are based on our current understanding of human learning processes. All who teach at USC are invited to attend both or either of the morning and afternoon sessions. Participants who register by February 22, 2011, will be provided a light lunch during the break between sessions.
Overcoming Apathy and Creating Excitement in the Classroom
9:00 a.m. - 11:15 a.m.
What can instructors do to facilitate learning when they encounter students who seem uninterested and even apathetic toward course content and assignments? Part of the responsibility for learning belongs to students, but as faculty, we can find new ways to motivate, inspire, and maybe even cajole students to learn. This workshop will demonstrate and explain how instructors can make classroom learning, perhaps one of the most artificial learning settings, a more meaningful experience for students. The presenter uses theories of learning and motivation as a basis for creating strategies to increase student engagement in course content and class sessions. Participants will have an opportunity to try out and experience first-hand some of these techniques.
How Students Learn: Strategies for Teaching from the Psychology of Learning
12:05 p.m. - 1:25 p.m.
Abundant research demonstrates that learning takes place when the student's mind actively engages in the material. The major problem is determining how to increase that activity. Within the discipline of human memory, learning, and cognition exists a vast body of literature dealing specifically with this issue. Participants will leave this workshop with an understanding of the basic concepts in human learning, how to present information so that students most effectively encode it into long-term memory, and how to help students know when they know.
Please Register
Advanced registration is required. Please register by February 22, 2011 if you desire lunch through the form below, email cte@sc.edu, or phone 803-777-8322.
About the Facilitator
Todd Zakrajsek is the Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was previously the Inaugural Director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching at Central Michigan University and the founding Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Southern Oregon University, where he also taught in the psychology department as a tenured associate professor. He also directs the Lilly Conference on Teaching and Learning at Traverse City, Michigan, and the International Conference on Improving University Teaching. Dr. Zakrajsek received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Ohio University. He has published and presented widely on the topic of student learning, including workshops and conference keynote addresses in 36 states and 4 countries in the past several years.