15-minute "TED Style" presentation at the Teacher-Librarian Day in Denver Colorado.

1. Name
School
Department
Scholarly Teaching:
How we are all social
scientists
@ Teacher-Librarian Day, 2015
Perspectives from “higher education”…
Dr. Jeff Loats

2. Discipline vs. Career
2
Dunning-Kreuger effect:
• Expertise in a discipline probably makes us
underestimate our knowledge/skill.
• A lack of expertise in teaching probably makes us
overestimate our knowledge/skill.
Teaching is a fundamentally social activity,
regardless of topic or academic discipline.
Should a surgeon know the medical science?
Should a teacher know the science of teaching?
We should all be social scientists!

3. Scholarly Teaching
3
Goal 1:
Apply the rigor and scholarship of our
academic disciplines to the discipline of
teaching.
Goal 2:
Choose teaching methods that are strongly
informed by the best empirical evidence
available.

4. Consistent Evidence-Based
Themes
4
• Active engagement during class time
• Effective preparation (students & instructors)
• Feedback loops and iterative learning

5. 29%
31%
20%
14%
5%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
0-20% 20-40% 40-60% 60-80% 80-100%
Consider a typical day in a typical (college) class.
What fraction of students did their preparatory
work before coming to class?
Previous anonymous poll results (compiled):
N = 232

6. 2% 10% 13% 38% 37%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
0-20% 20-40% 40-60% 60-80% 80-100%
Consider a typical day in a typical (college) class.
What fraction of class time is spent on lecture-
based delivery of content?
Previous anonymous poll results (compiled):
N = 82

7. How Do People Like to Learn
7
Do we ever enjoy learning?
Possible candidates:

8. Common Elements?
8
Feedback is (nearly) instantaneous
Failure is expected (desired?)
The cost of failure is very low
Mastery requires iterative learning
Contrast this with a typical feedback loop in the
classroom…

9. COMBINED IMPACT
9
Deslauriers, et al. (2011):
Novice teachers with evidence-based teaching
techniques more than doubles student learning,
compared to an experienced and highly-rated
traditional instructor. Effect size of 2.5!
“[…] other science and engineering classroom
studies report effect sizes less than 1.0. An effect
size of 2, obtained with trained personal tutors, is
claimed to be the largest observed for any
educational intervention.”

10. Your Summary
10
For yourself… or to share?
What nugget(s) do you want to be sure you come
away with from this presentation?
Contact: Jeff.Loats@gmail.com
Slides: www.slideshare.net/JeffLoats
I love talking and working with faculty,
don’t hesitate to get in touch.

11. References
11
Dunning–Kruger effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
Louis Deslauriers, Ellen Schelew and Carl Wieman (2011). Improved Learning in a Large-
Enrollment Physics Class. Science, Vol. 332 no. 6031 pp. 862-864 DOI:
10.1126/science.1201783