Are your students memorizing and not learning to think? Then this article might have some answers for you:

Most of us want our students to achieve higher level thinking, but often we don’t teach so as to produce the outcomes we most want. Our students may then spend more time in memorizing than in learning to think. Last semester we introduced a concept called “alignment,? which revealed the need to avoid pedagogy that is mismatched to our desired outcomes. In 1989, Eric Mazur of Harvard University encountered this mismatch in his introductory physics classes. Below is a memo he wrote (Science Teaching Reconsidered – A Handbook, Committee on Undergraduate Science Education, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1997, p. 22) describing his adjustments.

From a Nutshell Note, by Ed Nuhfer: An Example – Teaching to Get Your Desired Outcomes

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