Deep Learning Series

In order to continue the dialogue beginning at the Teaching Effectiveness Symposium, the Center for Teaching Excellence will host a series of sessions based on James Lang’s Small Teaching book. These conversations will be led by CTE staff along with teaching award winners and leading faculty across campus. We hope this series will not only build on the ideas from the TES sessions, but will expand to challenge all of us to think about how we can improve deep learning among our students.

Each session will take a chapter from Lang’s book and discuss the key concepts and takeaways. The sessions will also have a hands-on component so you can see how these ideas will work for you whether you teach introductory courses through graduate seminars. We also hope this series will help you connect with faculty across campus thinking about these issues and encourage us all to push our instruction to improve how students are learning the content we have to share with them.

Previous Series Topics:

Retrieving & Predicting:  Fostering Curiosity and Student Memory Retrieval 

Do you have the problem of students not remembering course content from previous class sessions? Are you students engaged in the moment, but unable to recall information at the end of the semester? Can your students read the information, but are unable to predict ways the material can be used? This session, led by CTE Director Michael Harris and based on the first and second chapter from James Lang’s Small Teaching book, will provide specific techniques that you can use with any class to improve student memory recall and making predictions. Participants will use retrieval techniques that can be employed in any size class or with any level of student. Additionally, participants will discuss the mechanics of prediction from a cognitive perspective, learning how curiously can boost memory.