Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive

Inspired by the surge of online courses during the COVID 19 pandemic, researcher and educational innovator Stephen M. Kosslyn offers a treasure trove of active learning principles and activities to bring online courses alive. Whether your course is synchronous (e.g., live with Zoom) or asynchronous (e.g., using video content on Canvas), Active Learning Online will inject your new or existing course with all the benefits of active learning: your course will be more interesting and effective, student engagement will increase, learning outcomes will be reached, and general teaching and learning experiences will be enriched. At the heart of this book are five key principles from the science of learning that will help to ensure that that taught materials stick in students' minds: (1) deep processing, (2) chunking, (3) building associations, (4) dual coding, and (5) deliberate practice. Based on these learning principles, Active Learning Online provides a wealth of specific active learning exercises that you can implement in your classes immediately. Further, it provides you with the tools to create your own active learning exercises, tailored to your specific interests and the subject matter of your class. To provide the very best, scientifically-proven online learning experience (not to mention hybrid and in-person learning experiences), Active Learning Online is an invaluable resource for instructors, course designers, school administrations and teacher-education students.

About the Author :
Stephen M. Kosslyn is currently the Founder, President and Chief Academic Officer of Foundry College and is Founder and President of Active Learning Sciences. Prior to that, he was Founding Dean and Chief Academic Officer of the Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute. He previously served as Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University after having been chair of the Department of Psychology, Dean of Social Science, and the John Lindsley Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. While at Harvard, he was also co-director of the Mind of the Market Lab at Harvard Business School and a member of the Department of Neurology at the Mass. General Hospital. He received a B.A. from UCLA and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, both in psychology. Kosslyn's research has focused on the nature of visual cognition, visual communication, and the science of learning; he has authored or coauthored 14 books and over 300 papers on these topics. Kosslyn has received numerous honors, including the National Academy of Sciences Initiatives in Research Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, three honorary Doctorates (University of Caen, University of Paris Descartes, Bern University), and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.