But it matters — A teacher friend recently asked me about the timing of instruction and the best times to teach certain subjects. He wrote: I immediately thought of the oft-cited study in which researchers evaluated judicial rulings on parole, across four Israeli prisons, to better understand factors that influenced parole decisions. Gender of…

Objects in your “mirror” may be less clear than you think! — Recently, a friend (we’ll call her Veronica) posted a photo on Facebook of her son’s latest cooking triumph; a perfectly cheesy, bubbly chicken Parmesan. Positively restaurant-worthy. Another friend (we’ll call him Tom) commented and asked Veronica for the recipe. To which she responded as follows:

For teachers and students too — A good friend and colleague of mine describes motivation as “the desire to start, persist and put in the mental effort to learn.” The starting part is key and one of the chief truths about teaching: if students aren’t motivated to put in the effort it takes to learn, all…

Small moves toward harnessing the positive power of feedback — A phrase I think about often is “if nothing changes, nothing will change.” And it’s true in all facets of life. In order to improve on or master anything, we need to engage in goal-oriented instruction and practice of sufficient quality and frequency. …

Fostering positive teacher-student relationships in an online world — Recently I asked a group of education experts this question: The group submitted their answers using an online polling tool. As the responses rolled in, the polling tool generated a word cloud in which the dimensions of the word in the cloud increased along with the submission frequency. …

It depends. — I recently had the chance to interview an engineer who was in the process of designing employee training for a utility company. During our conversation, she described her development strategies and the types of activities she was creating. …

I am a much better teacher (and gardener) today because I completely ruined a cake. Last December, I finally decided to make a cake using a recipe I had torn out of Bon Appetit a couple of years earlier. Because it looked unusually complicated, the recipe languished in my pile…

How understanding different types of cognitive load can help you learn — Cognitive load relates to the fact that the part of our brains that processes what we are are currently doing, can only deal with a certain amount of information at one time. …

Recent reports by the cybersecurity company Proofpoint describe how cybercriminals are capitalizing on coronavirus fears and using online scams to steal personal and financial information. Cybercriminals may try to take advantage of your emotions — such as curiosity, fear, worry, and compassion for others — to trick you into clicking…