Introducing new types of learning, executive function processes, and strategies to foster students’ motivation and academic success

Date: June 19
Time: 14:00 – 18:00

As educators largely responsible for the academic success of students, we need to be aware that in this digital and globalized era, learners require not only their technological expertise but, more importantly, the mastery of processes such as goal setting, planning, prioritization, organization, flexibility to change, storage, manipulation of information in working memory, and self-monitoring. These processes are referred to as executive function processes. It is increasingly important to introduce strategies that systematically address these processes in the classroom to help students understand how they think and how they learn (metacognition). Furthermore, individuals and organizations involved in HE express the need for other important types of learning that do not readily emerge from Bloom’s taxonomy, e.g., learning to learn, leadership and interpersonal skills, ethics, communication skills, character, tolerance, ability to adapt to change. This workshop (1) provides, using a pedagogical engineering approach, a paradigm for teaching students strategies that integrate executive function processes; (2) describes/illustrates how strategic, systematic instruction and adaptations of classroom work and tasks can benefit all students; (3) introduces and illustrates a new and broader taxonomy of important types of learning that go far beyond the cognitive domain of Bloom’s taxonomy and even, beyond cognitive learning itself.

Goals & Objectives: The purpose of this workshop is to foster participants’ awareness of the current and pressing need to develop a more meaningful way of educating our higher education students to address and respond to the current societal challenges we are facing nowadays with ethic, leadership, adaptability to change, and superior interpersonal and communication skills.

• Share real-world examples and illustrations used to help higher education (HE) students become fully aware that developing and working on their executive functions in the classroom is critical for their academic success and their personal and professional development.
• Provide the rationale and adequate pedagogical foundation to support participants in creating significant learning experiences.
• Develop participant awareness through illustration/discussion/group exercises of what a learning-centered approach entails, and how a content-centered approach can be modified.
• Practice (re)formulating their overall course objectives in terms of meaningful learning.
• Incorporate strategies to use when planning and organizing course content takes prevalence over thinking about how to teach the course so that students learn well.

Organizer: With 35 years of experience in teaching, professional development and training, Genny Villa specializes and excels in designing and implementing interactive methodologies to help professionals from diverse backgrounds acquire and apply pedagogical strategies to improve their teaching and facilitate students’ learning. Her current research activities include the pedagogical integration of ICT in teacher trainers’ practice and initial teacher education programs through training interventions implemented from a pedagogical engineering perspective. Dr. Villa aims at empowering and training educators to respond to the increasing demands regarding the integration of ICT in their teaching practice, with an emphasis on their e-learning culture, the pedagogical added value of technology, problem solving and higher order thinking skills. Her research interests include teachers’ e-learning culture and innovative technology integration; design of strategies based on cognitive, social and affective neuroscience of education to foster students’ motivation and academic success; face-to-face, hybrid and online teaching and learning.