Bringing the Neuroscience of Learning to Online Teaching : An Educator?s Handbook

This practical resource draws on the best of neuroscience to inform decisionmaking about digital learning. We live in unprecedented times that have pushed schools to make many decisions that have been postponed for years. For the first time since the inception of public education, teachers have been invited to redesign the learning landscape by integrating an intelligent selection of digital educational resources and changing pedagogical approaches based on information from the learning sciences. This handbook will help teachers make the most of this opportunity by showing them how to use digital tools to differentiate learning, employ alternative options to standardized testing, personalize learning, prioritize social-emotional skills, and inspire students to think more critically. The author identifies gems in quality teaching that coincide with how the brain learns best and are amplified in online contexts, including 40 evidenced-informed pedagogies. This book will help all educators move online teaching and learning to new levels of confidence and success.

Book Features:

• Provides quick references to key planning tools like decision-trees, graphics, app recommendations, and step-by-step directions to help teachers create their own online learning courses.
• Guides teachers through a 12-step model for instructional design that meets both national and international standards.
• Shows educators how to use an all-new Digital Resource Taxonomy to select resources, and how to research and keep them up to date.
• Explains why good instructional design and educational technology are complementary with best practices in learning sciences like Mind, Brain, and Education Science.
• Shares ways teachers can leverage technology to create more time for the personalized aspects of learning.
• Shows educators how to design online courses with tools that let all students begin at their own starting points and how to differentiate homework.
• Offers evidence-informed pedagogies to make online intimate and authentic for students.

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa is an instructor at the Harvard University Extension School in a course called the “Neuroscience of Learning: An Introduction to Mind, Brain, Health and Education”, a 100% online, flipped course with a synchronous meeting time. She taught kindergarten–university and is the associate editor of Nature Partner Journal Science of Learning, and an author and international educational consultant. She is the author of the Teachers College Press classic The New Science of Teaching and Learning: Using the Best of Mind, Brain, and Education Science in the Classroom.