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Each of these illusions contain an element of truth that makes them appealing and enduring, but they do not have evidence to support their effectiveness in student learning. This blog post explains each of these illusions, describes why they are harmful to learning, and provides guidance for improving instruction.
Most instructors quickly realize that they cannot just explain what they know and students will immediately understand it. Experts have so much context to their understanding that novices are missing. We then realize we have to break down a concept or topic into smaller parts to help the learner understand the bigger idea. Sometimes, though, we spend so much time on the smaller parts, we neglect to support students in assembling them into the whole that we understand. We emphasize specific pieces of information, skills, or approaches and assess them, then become disappointed when learners are not able to apply their learning in new contexts. Effective learning must use a combination of breaking down concepts and skills into smaller parts as well as strategically helping students to understand how they relate and differ across contexts.
Creating spaces where all students feel empowered to discuss tough topics openly and respectfully can be difficult. The Conversation Café provides a practical way to foster equitable dialogue by guiding students through structured rounds of sharing and listening in small groups. This free resource from OneHE shows you how to set this up in your own classroom.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Deslauriers et al. (2019) compared traditional lecture with active learning in an introductory physics course. Although students in the active sections learned more—as shown by higher performance on objective tests—they felt like they learned less. The authors argue that active learning requires more cognitive effort, which students may interpret as poor learning, while smooth lectures create an illusion of learning. This mismatch suggests that student perceptions alone (e.g., course evaluations) can be misleading when judging teaching effectiveness.
Chew & Cerbin propose a research-based framework of nine interacting cognitive challenges that teachers must address in order to promote “optimal learning” rather than merely acceptable performance. They emphasize that teaching is not just delivering content but creating the conditions in which students learn. Each of the nine challenges represents a characteristic of how students think, learn, or struggle — the idea being that failure to address any one of these can undermine learning. The authors describe each challenge, provide examples, and suggest instructional strategies for mitigation.