Learning Science Lab | Research

Nearly three-quarters of college students cheat during their undergraduate careers; a startling number. In Cheating Lessons, James Lang argues that cheating arises less from student laziness or immorality than from course designs that reward it. High-stakes tests, limited assessments, and unclear grading fuel dishonesty. Lang shows how reshaping learning environments to promote mastery, motivation, and self-efficacy can curb cheating and significantly boost student performance.

This semester, the Learning Science Lab team is reading Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn. This book explains the major principles and strategies of learning, outlining why it can be so hard sometimes. The book is structured in three parts – ‘learning within classrooms’, ‘learning foundations’, which explains the cognitive building blocks of knowledge acquisition and ‘know thyself’ which explores, confidence and self-knowledge.

Mayer examines whether people learn more deeply when ideas are expressed in words and pictures rather than in words alone. He reviews 12 principles of instructional design that are based on experimental research studies and grounded in a theory of how people learn from words and pictures. The result is what Mayer calls the cognitive theory of multimedia learning.

The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning is a comprehensive analysis of research and theory in the field of learning science, with a focus on computer-based learning. Since the first edition appeared in 2005, it has shaped the field and become the primary reference work for multimedia learning. Multimedia environments, including online presentations, e-courses, interactive lessons, simulation games, slideshows, and even textbooks, play a crucial role in education.

Co-authored by Kristen Sosulski, Director of the Stern Learning Science Lab, this book takes a step-by-step approach to online course development. At its core is a set of standards that are based on best practices in the field of online learning and teaching. Pedagogical, organizational, and visual design principles are presented and modeled throughout the book, and users will quickly learn from the guide’s hands-on approach.

In the design of digital environments, we make a series of decisions around how learning content and artifacts are organized, displayed, and presented. The decisions around design are rooted in best practices and research from the field of learning sciences and educational technology. In this research project, we seek to understand the impact of these design decisions for online courses on student performance and engagement.