A decade ago, James Lang banned cell phones in his classroom. Frustrated by how easily they could sidetrack his students, Lang sought out a distraction-free environment, hoping it would help his students pay attention to his lessons. But after just a few years, Lang gave in. Not only was his no-cellphones policy ineffective (even his best students ignored it), he realized that he, like many of his fellow teachers, was missing an important point. The problem isn't phones. It's our antiquated notions of the brain. In Distracted, Lang makes the case for a new way of thinking about how to teach young minds based on the emerging neuroscience of attention. Although we have long prized the ability to focus, the most natural way of thinking is distraction. Our brains are designed to continually scan our environment, looking for new information, occasionally wandering off in different directions in search of new insights. This is not to say that iPhones are not good at distracting us, but that what they represent is in principle nothing new, because sustained periods of intense focus are not what humans are good at. Of course, we still do need to pay attention to learn. The problem is that we think of learning as a matter of managing distraction, when we should instead think of it as actively cultivating attention. This starts with letting go of technology bans, which are little more than a fig leaf applied to the objective difficulty of paying attention. But it involves more active ways of rethinking classroom conventions too. For example, rather than structuring lessons as 45 or 60-minute blocks of lecturing, teachers could segment their classes into a series of smaller lessons, with regular shifts in focus, appealing to the brain's interest in novelty. Simple changes can drastically improve students' performance, and in Distracted, Lang takes readers on a sprawling tour of how some of America's best teachers are improving student performance using concepts such as modular classrooms, flow states, and student-directed learning. Together, these insights offer a new way of thinking about how to not only more effectively teach a lesson plan, but to teach students the most important lesson of all: how to learn.

A freshly updated edition featuring research-based teaching techniques that faculty in any discipline can easily implement Research into how we learn can help facilitate better student learning--if we know how to apply it. Small Teaching fills the gap in higher education literature between the primary research in cognitive theory and the classroom environment. In this book, James Lang presents a strategy for improving student learning with a series of small but powerful changes that make a big difference many of which can be put into practice in a single class period. These are simple interventions that can be integrated into pre-existing techniques, along with clear descriptions of how to do so. Inside, you'll find brief classroom or online learning activities, one-time interventions, and small modifications in course design or student communication. These small tweaks will bring your classroom into alignment with the latest evidence in cognitive research. Each chapter introduces a basic concept in cognitive research that has implications for classroom teaching, explains the rationale for offering it within a specific time period in a typical class, and then provides concrete examples of how this intervention has been used or could be used by faculty in a variety of disciplines. The second edition features revised and updated content including a newly authored preface, new examples and techniques, updated research, and updated resources. How can you make small tweaks to your teaching to bring the latest cognitive science into the classroom? How can you help students become good at retrieving knowledge from memory? How does making predictions now help us learn in the future? How can you build community in the classroom? Higher education faculty and administrators, as well as K-12 teachers and teacher trainers, will love the easy-to-implement, evidence-based techniques in Small Teaching.

Find out how to apply learning science in online classes The concept of small teaching is simple: small and strategic changes have enormous power to improve student learning. Instructors face unique and specific challenges when teaching an online course. This book offers small teaching strategies that will positively impact the online classroom. This book outlines practical and feasible applications of theoretical principles to help your online students learn. It includes current best practices around educational technologies, strategies to build community and collaboration, and minor changes you can make in your online teaching practice, small but impactful adjustments that result in significant learning gains. Explains how you can support your online students Helps your students find success in this non-traditional learning environment Covers online and blended learning Addresses specific challenges that online instructors face in higher education Small Teaching Online presents research-based teaching techniques from an online instructional design expert and the bestselling author of Small Teaching.

Teaching the Literature Survey Course makes the case for maintaining--even while re-imagining and re-inventing--the place of the survey as a transformative experience for literature students. Through essays both practical and theoretical, the collection presents survey teachers with an exciting range of new strategies for energizing their teaching and engaging their students in this vital encounter with our evolving literary traditions. ?From mapping early English literature to a team-based approach to the American survey, and from multimedia galleries to a "blank syllabus," contributors propose alternatives to the traditional emphasis on lectures and breadth of coverage. The volume is at once a set of practical suggestions for working teachers (including sample documents like worksheets and syllabi) and a provocative engagement with the question of what introductory courses can and should be.

You go into teaching with high hopes: to inspire students, to motivate them to learn, to help them love your subject. Then you find yourself facing a crowd of expectant faces on the first day of the first semester, and you think Now what do I do?

Practical and lively, "On Course" is full of experience-tested, research-based advice for graduate students and new teaching faculty. It provides a range of innovative and traditional strategies that work well without requiring extensive preparation or long grading sessions when you re trying to meet your own demanding research and service requirements. What do you put on the syllabus? How do you balance lectures with group assignments or discussions and how do you get a dialogue going when the students won t participate? What grading system is fairest and most efficient for your class? Should you post lecture notes on a website? How do you prevent cheating, and what do you do if it occurs? How can you help the student with serious personal problems without becoming overly involved? And what do you do about the student who won t turn off his cell phone?

Packed with anecdotes and concrete suggestions, this book will keep both inexperienced and veteran teachers on course as they navigate the calms and storms of classroom life.

eaching the Literature Survey Course makes the case for maintaining-even while re-imagining and re-inventing-the place of the survey as a transformative experience for literature students. Through essays both practical and theoretical, the collection presents survey teachers with an exciting range of new strategies for energizing their teaching and engaging their students in this vital encounter with our evolving literary traditions. From mapping early English literature to a team-based approach to the American survey, and from multimedia galleries to a "blank syllabus," contributors propose alternatives to the traditional emphasis on lectures and breadth of coverage. The volume is at once a set of practical suggestions for working teachers (including sample documents like worksheets and syllabi) and a provocative engagement with the question of what introductory courses can and should be.