ED 262 KCKCC Sp '24

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“What do the readings have to do with class?” “Why do we even have to do the readings?”

After spending more than a decade supporting college faculty in teaching, I have heard students utter these statements numerous times. I often observe classes and conduct mid-course focus groups with students. It continues to surprise me that students regularly question how the readings connect to class. Certainly, instructors would not be assigning readings that had nothing to do with the course! Given how much we worry about students not doing the readings, why would we assign unrelated readings? Yet, frequently, in courses in different disciplines, I’ve heard this type of feedback from students, “We don’t understand the readings, they have nothing to do with what we talk about in class.”

Via Elizabeth E Charles

By now most of us are aware that the quality of our learning depends on a number of different factors, some of which are easier to control than others. But the more we understand about why and how everyday things can affect our ability to commit new information to memory, the more effective our learning will be.

A growing body of research shows that even seemingly insignificant factors such as natural lighting, type of background noise, and the time of day we study can have a bigger impact on our productivity and learning than we ever imagined. Here’s a look what we know so far, and how you can optimise your environment and study routine to learn faster and get better grades.

Via Elizabeth E Charles