Psychological Science: It CAN Inform SoTL

Over the last 20+ years, we have understood more about how students can learn effectively. Much of this work has come out of psychological and learning sciences and has focused on lab-based studies that have demonstrated optimal conditions for learning. As we have begun to translate that work into the classroom, it has become abundantly clear that there are numerous variables that really guide the effectiveness of such practices. In many ways, psychology and the learning sciences have done a great job of providing us with the techniques. It's up to us, as practitioners of SoTL, to develop the boundary conditions of those learning strategies so we can identify the variables at play and implement them effectively in our courses.

In this workshop, we will talk about learning sciences and discuss the varied ways we can utilize SoTL to better implement these strategies into our learning experiences for students. The session will be highly interactive, and members of the audience are encouraged to come with ideas, thoughts and questions about the science of learning to better maximize our time to develop effective SoTL strategies for our unique contexts.