BATON ROUGE – LSU's Saundra McGuire, assistant vice chancellor for learning and teaching in LSU's Division of Student Life and Enrollment Services, recently co-authored an American Scientist article with Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Roald Hoffmann. The article, "Learning and Teaching Strategies," describes six learning and six teaching strategies using the authors' collective experiences as well as advances in cognitive psychology.
"The collaboration to write the article began after I gave a talk at Cornell University on Friday, Feb. 6, 2009. At 11:30 p.m. that Sunday, I received an e-mail from Roald telling me that he was so inspired by my presentation of learning strategies that he had written some of his own," said McGuire, who is also a professor of chemistry and former director of LSU's Center for Academic Success. "He suggested we write an article on it, and we started to put the piece together." A shorter version of the article originally appeared in the journal Science in September 2009 as a letter.
The six learning strategies McGuire and Hoffmann detail in the article are
For educators, the authors suggest
After the learning strategies and teaching tactics, Hoffmann and McGuire discuss three transforming motivators, which include having students determine their preferred learning style, teaching students how to learn by teaching them how to use metacognition – thinking about their own thinking – to become more effective learners and developing a mentor/apprenticeship relationship between a student and teacher.
In closing, the article states, "We in academia expect students to acquire information, strategies and critical-thinking skills that allow them to learn from our teaching. There should be no less expectation that instructors think critically and seek out specific strategies to improve performance in the classroom or lecture hall."
McGuire was Hoffmann's teaching assistant as a graduate student at Cornell in the 1970s, and they have remained in contact since then. Hoffmann visited LSU in 2003 as a Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship Series speaker.
To view the article in its entirety, visit http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2010/5/learning-and-teaching-strategies .
More news and information can be found on LSU's home page at www.lsu.edu
American Scientist