Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

‘Evidence-based’ education, scientific racism, and how learning styles became a myth          

As another year draws to a close, the editorial team at Faculty Focus looks back on some of the most popular articles of the year. Throughout 2017, we published more than 200 articles, covering a wide range of teaching and learning topics, including assignment strategies, cell phone policies, course design, flipped classrooms, online discussions, study strategies, and grading policies.

Change is happening at a disorienting pace and our institutions can barely keep up.

That’s why, in March 2017, we convened a meeting of top thought leaders in the fields of learning, innovation, and technology. We asked them: how can we rapidly accelerate progress in education—not only to help marginalized communities catch up to where the privileged are today, but also to reach a more effective, holistic, and equitable education for every child in the world?

It wouldn’t be the end of the year without a few top 10 lists. As we prepare to put 2016 in the rearview mirror, we’re offering up our own list, which goes to 11.

Throughout 2016, we published more than 200 articles. The articles covered a wide range of teaching and learning topics, including diversity and inclusion, critical thinking, peer feedback, assignment strategies, course design, flipped learning, online discussions, and grading policies.

It’s been an exciting year in education with big advances in educational technology and instructional design, from new implementations of virtual reality to fascinating insights into everything from motivation and creativity to tried-and-true learning strategies.

As longtime practitioners in our disciplines, we develop implicit skills that can be the source of some of the deepest learning for our students. In his book Experience and Education, John Dewey describes habit as “the formation of attitudes, attitudes that are emotional and intellectual…our basic sensitivities and ways of responding to all the conditions we meet in living” (35). Experiencing implies the sensing body, embodied learning, and Dewey does not shy away from the emotional dimensions of learning—both of which are often where the deepest learning happens, where students’ passion for a discipline ignites, and where experts’ best ideas originate. These often-overlooked dimensions of learning are also where empathy lives, and so it is there that knowledge might blossom not only into expertise but into wisdom.