1. Until recently, there was no hard evidence of how the main component affecting learning (the brain) worked. “Teaching was probably closer to folklore knowledge than scientific knowledge” Robert Sylwester, Celebration of Neurons 1995

2. The degree to which information will be available to a learner and the ways in which the information can be used by the learner (depth, breadth and length of use) depends on the ways, context, complexity, challenge and transfer of the information being taught (Zull, 2002). These are a great deal of variables to control.

3. The learners’ prior experiences play the single biggest role in their learning but teachers have little to no control over them. (David Ausubel 1964; Renate and Geoffrey Caine, 1995).

4. Emotion is woven into every aspect of the learning process –we teach the whole person not just the cognitive brain. However, teachers have only limited control of the emotions involved in and affecting learning (Zull, 2002). 

5. Helping learners to unlearn behaviors, concepts, ideas etc. that are in error is more difficult, (but necessary) than teaching students new learning (Starbuck, 1996).

6. Teachers have very little time to teach learners compared to the time learners have on their own. The average 3 credit college class (45 hours per semester—three hours per week) equals only 1.7 % of a week.

7. Most learning occurs outside the classroom— (Goldberg, 2001) This learning process takes time—time to reflect, practice, apply, and test out the new patterns. The extent to which each student spends the necessary time for learning to occur is not under the direct control of the teacher.

8. The range of the learners’ abilities from low to high that can be present in any given classroom makes providing learning opportunities to all students difficult and in some cases simply not possible to do (Caine and Caine 1995).

9. Our students have grown up in a sense-luscious,  media based culture and it is difficult to offer students, in a traditional college classroom, a visual learning experience  that competes with what they are use to (Gentile, D. A. & Walsh, D. A. 1999).

10. Students have 12 years of neuronal networks developed for school. These experiences have given them very specific ideas about what school should be. As college instructors when we don’t meet with their ideas of school teaching can be very difficult.

Faculty wanting further information about any of these topics are encouraged to contact Terry Doyle at doylet@ferris.edu



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