Fall Teaching Conference
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
8:00am - 2:30pm
Henry Hall Atrium
"Teaching and the Biology of Learning"
What can we learn about teaching and learning from someone who is a biologist, a biochemist, and director of a teaching and learning center? We'll find out at this year's Fall Conference. The keynote speaker is James E. Zull, Professor of Biology, Professor of Biochemistry, Director, University Center of Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve University, and author of The Art of Changing the Brain (Stylus, 2002).
About Our Keynote Speaker
We're fortunate to learn from James Zull, a biologist and biochemist, who in recent years has focused on the applications of his research to teaching and learning. He explains his work on his website at Case Western Reserve University:
Our biochemistry laboratory closed in 1998, after 25 years of research on cell-cell communication, protein folding cell membranes, and biosensors. However, we have now turned our interests toward understanding how brain research can inform teaching. Building on our background in cell-cell communication, our experience with human learning and teaching at UCITE, and the increasing knowledge about the human brain, this work led to the publication of a book entitled The Art of Changing the Brain, in the fall of 2002. Thus although we no longer conduct laboratory research, we remain active in scholarship and publication.
According to our current model of the connection between brain function, human learning, and education, we believe that education can engage the learner's brain to the fullest extent when students follow a cycle of concrete experience with their subject, reflection on their experience and connecting it to their prior knowledge, generation of their own abstract hypotheses about their experience and testing their hypotheses through action, which produces a new sensory (concrete) experience.
This afternoon, Dr. Zull will be offering a workshop on emotion in learning that has been very well received in the many other venues at which he has spoken. If you haven't registered but would like to attend, please wait at the door of PAD 262 until the start of the workshop to see whether there will be room.
Dr. Zull's Power Point presentations can be found here:
Keynote Presentation
Emotion Workshop
Page last modified September 7, 2010
