Tag: Sarah Rose Cavanagh

“Some people hold the view that if you are a learned scholar in a field, that should be enough to make you a good teacher.”

We all know this isn’t true. Is there a person alive who hasn’t suffered through a class taught by an expert who was boring? And yet, it seems to me that we are reluctant to acknowledge that “emotion” can support or suppress learning. We focus on covering the material instead … Read More

“You want to aim for what D’Mello and colleagues call a ‘zone of optimal confusion.’”

D’Mello and his research team identified three guiding principles for implementing confusion in the college classroom: it should be appropriate, intentional and in the context of learning; students should possess the ability to successfully resolve the confusion; and when students can’t resolve it on their own, there should be appropriate … Read More

“Students rated sociability (e.g., friendliness, warmth) as significantly more important than did faculty.”

A 2014 study by Megan Gerhardt evaluated how instructors and students ranked contributors to teaching credibility. While everyone agreed that competence in subject matter and character are most important, students noted a desire for sociability that “has important implications for the classroom experience.” As Sarah Cavanagh observes, “one route … Read More

“Attributes like confidence, enthusiasm, and likability can be perceived in the briefest of exposures.”

In The Spark of Learning, Sarah Rose Cavanagh describes a study where students were asked to rate professors after seeing 30-second videos of lectures that had no audio. The students’ ratings predicted with surprising accuracy the professors’ actual end-of-semester evaluations. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that in teaching … Read More