Small Teaching: From Minor Changes to Major Learning

TeachWeek Keynote Talk and Workshop by James Lang

Talk: 12:00 - 2:00 PM (lunch provided)

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Research from the learning sciences and from a variety of educational settings suggests that a small number of key principles can improve learning in almost any type of college or university course, whether it uses traditional lectures, a flipped classroom, or another approach. This talk and workshop will introduce some of those principles, offer practical suggestions for how they might foster positive change in higher-education teaching and learning, and guide faculty participants to consider how these principles might manifest themselves in their current and upcoming courses.

Biography:

James M. Lang is the author of five books, the most recent of which are Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (Jossey-Bass, 2016), Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty (Harvard University Press, 2013), and On Course: A Week-by-Week Guide to Your First Semester of College Teaching (Harvard UP, 2008). Lang writes a monthly column on teaching and learning for The Chronicle of Higher Education; his work has been appearing in the Chronicle since 1999. His book reviews and public scholarship on higher education have appeared in a wide variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, and Time. He edits a new series of books on teaching and learning in higher education for West Virginia University Press. 

Lang has conducted workshops on teaching for faculty at more than a hundred colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad, and consulted for the United Nations on the development of teaching materials in ethics and integrity for college faculty. In September of 2016 he received a Fulbright Specialist grant to work with three universities in Colombia on the creation of a MOOC on teaching and learning in STEM education. He has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, an MA in English from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. in English from Northwestern University. Lang currently serves as a professor of English and the director of the D'Amour Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College in Worcester, Massachusetts.

Thanks to the Twenty-Seven Foundation for supporting this TeachWeek panel discussion, as well as sponsoring other events engaging Caltech faculty and students in new perspectives on teaching and learning.