I love learning as well as thinking about and studying about how people learn. I also love teaching, as well as thinking about and studying how best to educate college students. I think student learning is best facilitated through the careful and principled design of learning environments and courses that foster the development of discipline-specific knowledge and skill, increased interest and motivation to study the discipline, and the development of life long learning and critical thinking skills. This is accomplished by basing design decisions on principles of learning and cognition and by coordinating instruction strategies, domain content, and assessment techniques.

        I try to make it easy for students to approach me with questions about the class content, assignments, or my evaluations of their work by being relaxed and taking the time to make sure their questions are answered. While I try to be accessible and responsive to students, I also think students need to meet me half-way by taking responsibility for their education, being proactive and seeking help, and by learning to approach academic tasks strategically. I have high yet reasonable expectations of my students. I care about and respect my students, inspire them, and devote adequate time to the design of classes, preparation of materials and providing formative feedback. Most importantly, I cherish the time spent working with students individually or in small groups as we explore the content in more depth. I also seek feedback from students about my instructional design decisions and teaching performance; and I use this feedback (and results of my research into teaching) to improve myself as a teacher.

        I believe that students come to learning environments with a naive understanding of the subject, with different cognitive strengths and weaknesses, learning styles and strategies, levels of self-awareness, confidence in their skills, as well as personal experiences, interests and socio-cultural-economic backgrounds. I try to take advantage of these by helping students see the relevance of the content to their lives and eliciting students' initial understanding of the material. I know that all these factors, as well as the nature of the content, my expectations of students, philosophy of teaching, classroom demeanor and interaction with students, as well as my ability to sense the aspects of the content that students struggle with all impact student achievement. In order to better instruct students I spend time and energy trying to understand the concepts with which students struggle. In general, I also try to create a comfortable and casual atmosphere in the class by using humor, personal stories related to the material, and by encouraging students to question and discuss the material in class.

        Ideally, students are motivated to learn by an intrinsic intellectual curiosity about the content. Truth be told, it is hard for me to imagine that students of cognitive psychology are not inherently interested in learning about the mind, knowledge, the learning process, and/or about the nature of intelligence. However, to facilitate the development of student interest in cognitive psychology and other subjects, I try to communicate and demonstrate my own interest in the subject and desire to have them be interested in and learn the content. I present the material in an entertaining and interesting but logically and sensibly organized manner. I also try to foster student interest and motivation to study by providing a variety of ways for students to interact with and discuss the subject matter and by helping them to see its relevance to their lives.

        While it is up to students to take responsibility for their learning and education, I do my best to support the development of self-regulated learning skills. I also try to create learning situations where they can think deeply about the content and develop their critical thinking skills. Although the main of my teaching efforts is not to help students become more aware of their own cognitive processes and to become better thinkers and learners, it is a beneficial and encouraged secondary goal. Thus I encourage students to reflect on how they went about learning the material. I hope that my students will be able to apply the critical thinking skills learned in my courses to their everyday lives.