Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

INSIDE IOWA STATE
February 15, 2002

Forum promotes student learning

by Anne Krapfl
Nearly 50 ISU faculty members spent a recent lunch hour sharing ideas for making their classrooms "learning centered." Sponsored by the Center for Teaching Excellence, the Jan. 31 discussion was led by Barbara Licklider, educational leadership and policy studies. In a learning-centered classroom, the focus is on neither learner nor teacher, but learning, she said.

Learning doesn't happen without thinking, Licklider told her audience. The trick is finding ways to get more students to think more in the classroom.

"We want our students to understand, but we don't teach them to understand; we teach them to memorize," she said.

The full text of the story, including classroom recommendations for helping students learn, is online at http://www.iastate.edu/news/today/2002/feb/learning.shtml.