Developing Student Expertise and Community No .108 : Lessons from How People Learn

From the Editors

This issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learning presents research from a collaboration between learning scientists, assessment experts, learning technologists, and domain experts as part of a project with the vision of transforming education (specifically in bioengineering, but eventually in all fields) to produce adaptive expertise in students. This research is based on the model proposed in the National Research Council book, How People Learn. This model proposes a sequence of learning activities drawn from learning research that are designed to maximize the degree to which students understand and can use what they learn in meeting discipline-based challenges.

The chapters in this volume illustrate how learning scientists, assessment experts, learning technologists, and domain experts can work together in an integrated effort to develop learning environments centered on challenge-based instruction, with major support from technology. While the strategies and research illustrated in these chapters were developed in one discipline (engineering), they are applicable across disciplines that have as their goal helping students learn to think about the process of problem solving.