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What do students need to understand and integrate the material introduced in class? And what are some practical strategies teachers can use to effectively prime students’ understanding of new content? These are the questions explored in this seminar.

We will introduce a simplified model of learning, discuss how new information is encoded, and explore which kinds of cognitive load should be minimized (Sweller, 1988), while maintaining a desirable level of difficulty within the Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1930). We will also highlight known barriers and distractors to avoid when presenting new information.

While the seminar will be grounded in the scholarship of learning, we will also discuss effective strategies that you can use to introduce your students to new material.

Objectives: At the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• Describe the necessary cognitive components for learning, using the appropriate vocabulary introduced in the session;
• Recognize pitfalls to avoid when introducing new concepts;
• Choose at least one teaching strategy that can be used to facilitate students’ understanding of new material.