Optimized Learning

Learning is a journey that involves both the mind and the heart. Understanding the cognitive and emotional aspects of learning can help educators support students' intellectual growth and emotional well-being. Explore strategies to enhance attention, memory, critical thinking, and emotional resilience in the learning environment.

Overview of Learning Theories – GSI Teaching & Resource Center, University of California, Berkeley

This resource categorizes learning theories into three primary types: behaviorist, cognitive constructivist, and social constructivist. It offers a concise introduction to each, aiding educators in understanding diverse approaches to student learning.

Applying Learning Theories – Center for Instructional Technology & Training, University of Florida

This guide emphasizes the significance of comprehending how students learn to develop effective teaching strategies. It discusses three commonly referenced learning theory frameworks—behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism—and their applications in educational settings. ​

Overview of Cognitive Science – Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University

This resource explores how cognitive science principles can be utilized to improve the organization and processing of information to facilitate learning. It provides simple yet helpful concepts that instructors can apply to enhance educational outcomes. ​

Cognitive Science: Memory and Learning – GSI Teaching & Resource Center, University of California, Berkeley

This section delves into how students learn best by organizing and taking control of their new knowledge. It highlights the importance of making new information meaningful and the effectiveness of repetition and mnemonic techniques in enhancing learning. ​

High-impact practices, or HIPs, are active learning practices that promote deep learning by promoting student engagement.

High-Impact Practices – Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Maryland Eastern Shore

This resource discusses active learning practices that promote deep learning by fostering student engagement, as measured by the National Survey on Student Engagement (NSSE).

High-Impact Practices – Teaching & Learning Center, Volunteer State Community College

This guide introduces high-impact practices as evidence-based teaching and learning strategies that have been widely tested and shown to be beneficial for college students.

Active Learning – Center for Teaching Innovation, Cornell University

This resource defines active learning as methods that engage students through thinking, discussing, investigating, and creating. It emphasizes in-class activities where students practice skills, solve problems, and explain ideas in their own words through writing and discussion.

Learning analytics and data-informed teaching involve using data to understand and improve student learning and teaching practices, with learning analytics focusing on analyzing student data to inform teaching strategies and data-informed teaching using that data to adjust instruction. 

Data-Informed Decision Making with Learning Analytics – Vanderbilt University

This project explores how teachers and students interact with learning analytics to reflect on and adjust their teaching and learning activities. It investigates cognitive, psychological, and sociocultural factors affecting the use of data-based tools and their implications for analytics design.

Learning Analytics: The Ultimate Guide – Digital Learning Institute

This comprehensive guide covers the essentials of learning analytics, explaining its importance in digital learning. It provides an in-depth understanding of how learning analytics can be utilized to enhance educational outcomes.

Online Resource for Learning Analytics (ORLOA)

ORLA (Online Resource for Learning Analytics) is the National Forum’s open-access, online library of guides and manuals, covering key topics relating to learning analytics. It comprises over 30 resources that were developed in partnership with over 60 experts from across the Irish higher education sector.

ORLA is designed to provide key supports and information both to teaching staff who wish to use learner data as a resource to support their teaching practice and to institutional leaders who wish to design and drive effective, informed institutional strategies for data use. The resources in ORLA are structured for these two cohorts, but access to the full suite of resources is also available.

ORLA also includes a range of case studies, showing how Irish teaching staff are currently availing of learner data to enhance their own pedagogy.

Learning Analytics Research Network (LEARN)

As an intellectual hub where exciting new ideas about data-informed education arise, germinate and spark action, LEARN is committed to helping people interested in learning analytics get up to speed on the latest in the field. We have organized some informative and timely pieces from leaders in the field and key areas of research.

Research has shown that when students have a growth mindset, they are more likely to challenge themselves, believe that they can achieve more, and become stronger, more resilient and creative problem solvers. Educators can have an enormous impact on the mindset of their students.

Teaching Commons – Stanford University

This resource discusses the impact of a growth mindset on student learning, emphasizing how believing in the ability to develop intelligence through effort leads to increased motivation and academic success.

Center for Teaching and Learning – Washington University in St. Louis

This resource offers strategies to promote a sense of belonging and a growth mindset among students, which are linked to improved motivation and academic performance.

Teaching + Learning Lab – Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

This resource explains how students with a growth mindset are more likely to embrace challenges and persist through difficulties, leading to enhanced learning outcomes.  

The competency-based education (CBE) approach allows students to advance based on their ability to master a skill or competency at their own pace regardless of environment. This method is tailored to meet different learning abilities and can lead to more efficient student outcomes.

Competency-Based Education – AACN Essentials Tool Kit

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) defines competency-based education as a system of instruction, assessment, feedback, self-reflection, and academic reporting based on students demonstrating their learned knowledge, attitudes, motivations, self-perceptions, and skills. This resource provides guidelines and toolkits for implementing CBE in nursing education.

Competency-Based Education Guide: Benefits and Differences to Traditional Education for 2025

This guide will answer the question, “What is competency- based education?" and explore how the approach compares to traditional education. Our team of researchers sheds light on what is the importance of competency- based curriculum and its structure. Furthermore, the guide enumerates the benefits that come with a competency- based education model.

Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN)

Learning should be measured by what you can do: the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that lay the foundation for success. C-BEN guides our networks of leaders towards quality competency-based models for education, hiring, and training, so everyone can grow the competencies they need for career-readiness and lifelong learning.

Competency-Based Education Guide: Benefits and Differences to Traditional Education for 2025

This guide will answer the question, “What is competency- based education?" and explore how the approach compares to traditional education. Our team of researchers sheds light on what is the importance of competency- based curriculum and its structure. Furthermore, the guide enumerates the benefits that come with a competency- based education model.

7 Things You Should Know About Competency-Based Education

The 7 Things You Should Know About... series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning technologies. Each brief focuses on a single technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use these briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

Accelerated learning theories emphasize a holistic, engaging, and learner-centered approach to education, aiming to foster rapid and effective knowledge acquisition and skills development by engaging the whole mind and body. 

How to Implement Accelerated Learning Successfully

Seven Corporation grantees define accelerated learning and provide insights for successful implementation.

Adult Learning Theory for 2025: Methods and Techniques of Teaching Adults

Developing effective, engaging learning programs for adult learners is a challenge for many educational institutions and organizations. For one, adult learners don’t have the freedom to fully devote their time to education. Adult learners may also face challenges such as financial constraints, which hinder them from fully engaging in the learning experience. These crucial differences are thoroughly explored in adult learning theory.