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Understanding Learning Strategy Use Through the Lens of Habit

This paper argues that students’ frequent use of ineffective learning strategies (like rereading and highlighting) isn’t just due to lack of awareness, time pressure, or goals — it may also reflect habitual behavior. Traditional research on self-regulated learning emphasizes deliberate choice and metacognition, but this article suggests that many study practices have become automatic routines triggered by environmental cues. Ineffective strategies often become habituated because they are easy, familiar, and contextually ingrained.

Worked Examples

When students are provided with practice or application assignments after learning new content, they often use incorrect strategies because they do not fully understand the underlying concepts. You can prevent this ineffective struggle by providing students with worked examples when introducing a new skill or process.

Manage Your Browser Tabs

How many browser tabs do you have open on a given day? Do you find yourself keeping them open and just putting your computer to sleep at the end of the day because you need to go back to those sites? Or maybe all of those open tabs are slowing down your computer.

Eight Ways to Promote Generative Learning

Fiorella and Mayer argue that learning is generative—students learn best when they actively make sense of new information by selecting, organizing, and integrating it with prior knowledge. They synthesize research identifying eight evidence-based strategies that consistently promote deeper understanding and transfer across contexts. These strategies shift learners from passive reception to active sense-making.

Reach out to Missing Students

It’s important to identify missing students as soon as possible in the beginning of the semester and to encourage those who have not yet engaged. A simple way to do this is to create a small assignment in Brightspace that all students should submit to by the end of the first or second week of class. After the due date, click on the name of the assignment in Brightspace, and then click Email Users Without Submissions. This will open a new email draft window with the students who have not submitted the assignment in the BCC field. Send a quick message to remind them about the assignment and to let you know if they are having issues with the course.

Inclusive Pedagogy Toolkit

The Inclusive Pedagogy (IP) Toolkit from Georgetown’s Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship (CNDLS) offers faculty a concise, practical collection of strategies for creating learning environments where all students can participate and succeed. It outlines core principles of inclusive teaching—such as transparency, flexibility, and fostering belonging—and turns them into easy-to-apply practices for course design, classroom interactions, and assessment.

Guide your students on the use of AI for learning

While there are mixed feelings about generative AI among faculty and students, it’s undeniable that AI is not going away and will continue to become embedded in all aspects of life. Even if students choose not to use it, they still need to understand how it works and ethical implications of its use. Who is going to teach them this?

Instructional Task Planner

I’m working on an interactive tool to help faculty visualize their workload and think through which instructional tasks they might cut back on. Faculty are so overextended, and I’ve found they’re extremely grateful when I acknowledge: