Do your students spend too much (or too little) time learning, with disappointing results? Do they procrastinate in their study because it’s boring and they’re easily distracted? Are you working to make your teaching even more inclusive? Uncommon Sense Teaching will give you practical new insights that will help you solve these goals and challenges, and many more.
This is like no other course on teaching—it weaves late-breaking insights from neuroscience with personal insights from the classroom to provide unexpected, yet practical, new approaches. You’ll discover how to bring out the best from all your students in today’s diverse teaching environment, where students often have a wide range of abilities.
Uncommon Sense Teaching will take your teaching to a higher level for whatever subjects you teach, whether math, physics, literature, dance, art, or anything else; and whether you are teaching K-12, university, business, vocational, or at home.
Join us today to move into the new era of education!
Overview
Syllabus
- Active Learning for All
- This week’s material covers the deepest essence of how we learn—which can provide surprisingly helpful and practical insights for our teaching! When students are learning, ideas captured in students’ working memories are sent to long-term memory in the neocortex. One of our biggest challenges in learning is the diversity in size of learners’ working memory—that temporary holding place for new ideas we are thinking about. (We three instructors model these differences in working memory capacity, with Terry having high capacity, Barb low capacity, and Beth variable, depending on the material.) Some people can hold more information in working memory—these “racecar” learners might learn more quickly, but what they learn can go by in a blur—they can jump to conclusions and find it difficult to correct themselves when they make errors. “Hiker” learners with lesser capacity working memory may learn more slowly, but they can learn more deeply, and sometimes more creatively, as a consequence. They can also find it easier to be flexible and change their thinking when they are wrong. What this all means is that the different sizes of working memory can have their advantages and disadvantages. Scaffolded instruction is a key to being more inclusive, so we can reach all of our learners, not just the few who are easy to teach. We will also take a fresh view of active learning—those words, as you will discover, do not always mean what you think they mean!
- Helping the Brain Build Better Links for Learning
- This week, we'll dive into the brain's two major "superhighways" of learning. The declarative pathway wends its way through the hippocampus and onto the neocortex. This pathway is for new information students are trying to figure out or learn. A tiny, fun, metaphorical choir will help you better understand how the hippocampus (a glib character named Hip!), the neocortex (a capacious singer named Neo), and working memory (the Conductor) all interact to help students learn declaratively. And you'll learn how Beth used this type of learning, along with the underlying, all-important consolidation processes—to help her recover her ability to read the words she can now speak so eloquently. The more mysterious procedural pathway involves information, skills, or activities that we use or do so often that we don't want to have to waste cognitive resources in having to think about them. Think that drill means kill? Think again—we teachers ignore the value of the procedural pathway at our peril. As we'll discover, smartly done drill leads to skill! We'll also cover important issues related to lack of focus, including task switching, dual tasking, and continuous partial attention. But unrelenting focus isn't always the answer—as we'll see, there are tricks to help students get around the cognitive fixation that can cause them so many problems on tests. Finally, we'll show how using a neural approach to understanding the effects of your teaching can also help you to understand the value of seemingly unrelated ideas and approaches like physical exercise, and of metaphor, when it learning. It's going to be a fun, action-packed week!
- Practice, Passion, and Procrastination
- This week, we dive into one of students' most common issues with their studies—procrastination. A common tool for business, the Pomodoro Technique, turns out to be also useful to help students of all ages focus their meditation. This is because the Pomodoro Technique makes masterful use of the brain's focusing and relaxing modes of thinking. Judicious focusing and relaxing of one's thoughts is also a great way to figure out difficult or frustrating concepts or problems. But when it comes to studying, it's important not only to focus and relax, but also to step back and look at the big picture of where the studies are headed. Is the common career advice for students to "follow your passion" always the best advice? And there are other bigger picture issues related to learning to help ensure our students approach their studies, projects, and tests with the best possible attitude and preparation
- How Human Brains Evolved—and Why This Matters for your Teaching
- Do children learn differently than adults? Yes they do, and this week's insights show us how our brains change as we mature. These changes mean that certain approaches that work great for our youngest students aren't necessarily appropriate for middle and high school students. Looking at learning from an evolutionary perspective helps us to understand why some types of learning are natural and easy, while other forms can be far more difficult. What are some of the best ways to tackle teaching the more-difficult-to-learn material? That's what this culminating week of our first MOOC in the Uncommon Sense Teaching Specialization is all about!
Taught by
Barbara Oakley, Beth Rogowsky and Dr. Terrence Sejnowski
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Related articles
Reviews
4.9 rating, based on 450 Class Central reviews
4.9 rating at Coursera based on 578 ratings
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An uncommonly surprising engineering perspective on learning Of most of the devices we use, we have a pretty good view of what is at the heart of their functioning. Cars have combustion or electrical engines, computers have chips and a CPU, our hea…
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Super information-dense, packed with the distilled pure essence of the latest in neuroscience and applying it to learning. All sources are available to read further. Absolutely love the science and evidence-backed approach, and challenging conventional wisdom in light of new discoveries.
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You might be expecting a rehash of Oakley and Sejnowski's "Learning How to Learn" aimed at teachers, but I am happy to report this is a new approach with plenty of new material. Yes, a recap of some basic concepts such as procrastination is included; it would not have been complete without them.
Another interesting presentation packed with metaphors, animations, and enthusiasm. If you are a teacher or lecturer, I would recommend this course! -
A very thoughtfully created class for teachers and learners alike, by three wonderful educators --- a teacher, a neuroscientist, and an engineer! Each brought their own unique expertise and experience in teaching this class. I first took thi…
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Uncommon Sense Teaching is a great course for teachers who really want to find ways to help their students.
It gives easy-to-understand explanations and background knowledge that teachers need to know when instructing their students.
Thus, after learning this course, teachers can better understand how to construct their courses and improve their teaching.
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I completed the specialization today. I found it quite useful. Uncommon sense teaching with online teaching seems a pretty good combination.
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This is 100% percent better than the course I took "Learning how to learn" and that course was excellent. Also there is a lot of more information in this course to learn. I recommend all teachers to take this course. I read the book first, but the course is a must for several reasons. The course helps retain the concepts in the book and visual presentations bring the book to life and puts emphasis on the concepts being taught in the book. Highly recommend this book for everybody that wants to learn and wants to know about how the brain learns. I recommend both the Book and the course.
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Brilliant
Barb and Terry join hands with Beth to extend their excellent series of how to learn with how to teach.
some parts are from their earlier courses, but that just serves to 'link it' as they say.
Mixing lecture type declarative learning with active learning that helps 'link' the content in students' memory is what i take back most.
Not too hard. -
I loved the course, It have gotten me into a different of thinking. Now with me using my brain to it's compacity, I can better teach my students and see the signs in them where they need the help or where I need to slow down.
Thanks -
I love it! The concepts are clearly explained in simple language and excellent graphics. I would recommend this course to all teachers and parents even. Thanks!
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I'm in a transition period and was looking for a way to grow as an educator without having to invest a ton of money. Auditing this course was definitely a great step! I've been fascinated by the advances in neuroscience for the past several years. This course really does what it proposes to do: makes real practical connections between that field and the classroom. The presentation is a bit corny, but very interesting and easy to follow. I'm planning to follow up with the second course.
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Having the learning processes of the brain laid out in such a simple, easy to understand and entertaining way was enormously helpful to me. The personal insights of each of the presenters as teachers themselves were also very helpful.
As a dental clinician tasked with teaching clinical skills to students, the tips presented in your videos are invaluable. I shall definitely be using all of those tips in helping my students learn better. Thank you X 3!!! -
This is an essential course for all educators, parents of learners, and anyone who wants to learn more about teaching and learning. The course is well-paced on Coursera, and is both content-rich yet digestible within a couple weeks. The course dispels many myths of education, and provides modern, research-backed evidence for effective teaching and learning. The additional resources provided at the end of each week enable us to go as deep as we wish into the supporting evidence and subject matter.
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this is the absolute best course, MOOC or otherwise, that I have ever taken. The videos were short but were so well done that I learned so much in such a short time. The content was inspiring as well. As teachers, we sometimes feel that reaching all students is hopeless. This course helped me realize there is hope.
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It's an amazing course, very well structured and conducted.
The explanations are clear, the most complicated steps are repeated several times from different points of view.
They applied what they teach and in the end I realized I learned 3-4 concepts that were new to me and very useful.
Great job, well done! -
This was a great course! It was didactic, fun, entertaining, full of useful content, practical strategies, and scientific information to support the explanations. It also provided plenty opportunities for practicing, thinking about the material and sharing ideas with peers. 100% recommended
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Wonderfully explained and really fun! A real eyer-opener! By combining neuroscience, cognitive learning and teaching principles, it gives us the foundations to undertand the processes that allow students to help learners reach to the top. Thanks a lot for allowing us to learn!
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The course is tough as it relates neuroscience with education, but the three instructors made it accessible with their metaphors. I have learned a lot about how students learn and how teachers should help their students to learn.
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This should be a required course for all educators. The course uses the latest in neuroscience methods to provide research-backed approaches to improve student learning. I find the course extremely useful.
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It was a useful course where get insights how the brains work and how can we deliver our lectures and perform our teaching as a message to the generation
