Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning

by James M. Lang

Prediction–Exposure–Feedback Even without formal testing or the use of clickers, you can always ask students to make informal, in-class predictions about any course material to which they are about to be exposed. This could happen in almost any discipline, in any type of class. Scientists know full well how prediction plays a role in the scientific method—in the form of the hypothesis—and likely already ask students to engage in predictive activities in their use of laboratory experiments and reports. But outside of the laboratory, and in other disciplines, instructors can still follow this same basic approach. If students have done some advanced reading from the textbook, which you plan to cover in more depth in lecture that day, you might begin that lecture by asking them to apply some concept they read about in the textbook to an example with which you will begin the day's class session.