Tag Archives: Education

October 26

Engaged teaching and learning: Ready, set, action!

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[En español] When I first signed up for formal training in best teaching practices from UCSD’s Center for Engaged Teaching, I thought I would learn good techniques for imparting knowledge to students. What I actually learned about was how to help students build their own knowledge, particularly through incorporating active learning in the classroom. Here […]

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September 01

Mentors Like Us: Expanding Diversity Research Program Curricula

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STEM diversity initiatives should shift the focus from solely providing resources to also investigating why the vast majority of minority students stray from academia.

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July 28

To improve your memory, try to get some space.

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Imagine you have a big exam or work presentation at the end of the week. You’ll have to do it all from memory, so you have some studying to do. How should you decide how much to prepare? Do you practice everything once? Twice? More? It’s intuitive (and true) that more repetition results in stronger, […]

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April 21

Peas or carrots: Evidence-based education programs targeting stress and attention

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I’m always keen to hear how scientists are able to reach out to their communities, whether it is by talking to young students about research opportunities, by tutoring or teaching, or by taking steps outside the lab to make direct links between research and the community. At this year’s meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society (CNS), one of […]

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March 13

The value of values affirmation in education and beyond

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The fields of social and cognitive psychology constantly provide examples of how small changes in the environment can impact cognition which may seem shocking in their simplicity. Cleaning one’s hands may lead to an increased feeling of moral cleanliness [1], a patch of gray may appear as much darker or lighter in brightness depending on […]

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September 13

Reading is Weird

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How do humans learn how to read? Reading is a much more recent development compared to spoken language, with the development of written language typically placed around 3200 BCE in Egypt (1). Some have termed this development a cultural invention because we were able to gain a new ability to understand meaning from written characters, […]

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