Lessons from Small Teaching: Connecting

Event Description

Educational research has suggested that a fundamental difference between novice learners’ understanding and experts’ understanding has to do with the complexity of connections among facts, skills, and concepts that they know. Experts have robust, flexible knowledge networks, while novice learners often do not. In Chapter 4 of James Lang’s Small Teaching, he argues that faculty play a critical role in supporting student learning by “helping them forge rich, interconnected networks of knowledge—ones that enable each existing piece of information in our content area to connect with lots of other information, concepts, and ideas” (96). In this virtual conversation, we’ll discuss ways to “create an environment that facilitates the formation” of connections that we hope students will make in our courses (99). We will also discuss ways of helping students correct misconceptions and forge more correct, more meaningful, and lasting connections among ideas.

For questions about this virtual conversation, please contact Dr. Meg Gregory, Associate Director for Faculty Programs and Services

Registration

Early registration for this event has closed. If you would still like to participate, please email Meg Gregory at meggregory@wustl.edu for the Zoom link.