Credit Hours: 3-4
Instructional Mode: Online & Asynchronous
Student Collaboration: Weekly hour-long small group virtual meetings (student choice of meeting synchronously or asynchronously)
Faculty Designer: Dr. David Williamson Shaffer, Learning Analytics faculty director
Instructor: Dr. Julia Rutledge, Learning Analytics director
“I was also floored by how immediately practical the content was – a pleasant surprise!”
Shannon Rogers, English language acquisition teacher, class of 2025
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EdPsych 501: Thinking and Learning is a graduate-level course designed to explore the psychological principles that are relevant to learning, knowing, and teaching. Rather than focusing on memorizing facts, in this class we hope that you will focus on ideas, questions, and contextual applications. It is our goal that you leave this course able to reflect on your own approach to learning, knowing, and teaching, and to think about your past, present, and future experiences through a variety of different lenses. Students will:
- Identify foundational theories of learning
- Demonstrate ability to make connections to perspectives on knowing
- Analyze types and implications of cognition
- Identify relationships between theory and application
- Design learning environments
Why this course?
Learning analysts shouldn’t just crunch the numbers: They should understand what learning is and can look like from a variety of theoretical lenses. This course builds a foundation in learning theory so that students can better understand data, assess learning outcomes, design learning environments, and so on.
How do students learn in 501?
Students engage with short (10-15 minute) video lectures, academic journal articles, individual assignments (reflective and enactive), collaborative group exercises, and a summative final synthesis paper.
Schedule of Topics
| Week | Topic |
| 1 | Distributed Cognition: How is intelligence is built into the tools around us? |
| 2 | Discourse: What role does interaction with other people plays in thinking? |
| 3 | Situated Cognition: How is thinking shaped by the context in which we are thinking? |
| 4 | Information Processing: What role does formal, abstract, rule-based thinking play in cognition? |
| 5 | Narrative Intelligence: How do stories play a role in thinking? |
| 6 | Expertise: What is the role of prior experience in cognition? |
| 7 | Embodied Cognition: How the body a central part of thinking itself, rather a passive container for some abstract “mind”? |
| 8 | Hybrid Mind: How the different properties of thinking have evolved and are linked together. |
What a past student has said
“It has completely shifted the way I think about learning and knowing and I can certainly see the benefit to starting out our program with this course.”
Student end-of-course evaluation, summer 2022
Instructor Insights
“I love teaching this course at the beginning of the Learning Analytics program curriculum because it is so personal. We ask students to respond to the question, “Who are you, as a learner?” The course pushes students to think about themselves from a learning, teaching, and knowing perspective, and asks them to examine their life experiences using a variety of theoretical lenses. As they explore their own cognition, the students build strong theoretical groundwork that will serve their futures as analysts and as humans.” – Dr. Julia Rutledge
Sample Week
Materials including videos, assignments, and readings will be available at the beginning of each week. Below is a suggested guideline for spacing out assignments in order to provide enough time for work, interactions with the instructors, students, and student group, etc. While the rhythm may change depending on the week, students can generally expect to engage with course materials and each other in this way and thus may plan accordingly. Note the purposeful balance between individual and group assignments. Below is a sample from Week 4 of this course:
| Week 4: | Information Processing Theory | ||||||
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | |
| Learning Objectives | Understanding the role of formal, abstract, rule-based thinking plays in cognition | ||||||
| Core Reading(s) | Pinker (2009) | ||||||
| Video Lecture | Watch IPT video lecture | ||||||
| Discussion Post | Post on reading & video by Thurs pm | ||||||
| Peer Response | Respond to at least 1 peer by Mon pm | ||||||
| Individual Implementation | Read Schwartz, Branford & Sears (2005), engage in activity and submit by Thurs pm | ||||||
| Group Workshop | Meet with group, respond to prompt, 1 member submit by Mon pm | ||||||
| Connections Journal | Connect Week 4 to Week 3 by Mon pm | ||||||
| Final Paper | Continue working towards building final paper outline | ||||||
- On getting back in the swing of things
- On structure and routines
- On real-life application
- On small group collaboration
- On feedback for learning
As I’m reading the provided articles, I am taking notes of important concepts. The readings have been challenging in a good way – being a couple of years out of school, it has taken a little bit to get back into the mindset of academic readings. All of the readings have been really interesting and relevant. Then, I watch Dr. Shaffer’s video and things start to click. The implementation aspect of the course helps me connect the dots even more and see how these concepts apply. I love that I can see how the content I’m learning (the theories) is applied in the organization of this course. – Katherine Hudson
The structure of the course has helped me – having a clear pattern each week for the flow of the week makes sense and is easy to follow. The material is challenging and thought-provoking, and I appreciate the many ways we are all able to interact with each other as students to help each other draw deeper meaning and connections out of the material. – Craig Umland
I enjoy how much I am encouraged to connect the theories to my own life and experiences, and I learn from reading/hearing others’ applications. – Fiona Johnson
The group is great. Everyone has been extremely helpful. Especially since I am new to education and everyone else has vast knowledge, I felt a little behind. However, when I reached out for help the group members were more than welcome to check my understanding of the material and give me feedback. Overall, the group has been amazing and flexible with each other. – Christian Angulo
The courses are intriguing and the amount of feedback from the professors and TAs are motivational. It lets me know much more clearly if I am on the right track or not. Also, it lets the students know that all the work we are doing is being evaluated and considered. – Essence Truth
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RULES, RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES
ACADEMIC CALENDAR & RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY
By virtue of enrollment, each student agrees to uphold the high academic standards of the University of Wisconsin-Madison; academic misconduct is behavior that negatively impacts the integrity of the institution. Cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, and helping others commit these previously listed acts are examples of misconduct which may result in disciplinary action. Examples of disciplinary action include, but is not limited to, failure on the assignment/course, written reprimand, disciplinary probation, suspension, or expulsion.
ACCOMMODATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES
The University of Wisconsin-Madison supports the right of all enrolled students to a full and equal educational opportunity. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Wisconsin State Statute (36.12), and UW-Madison policy (Faculty Document 1071) require that students with disabilities be reasonably accommodated in instruction and campus life. Reasonable accommodations for students with disabilities is a shared faculty and student responsibility. Students are expected to inform faculty [me] of their need for instructional accommodations by the end of the third week of the semester, or as soon as possible after a disability has been incurred or recognized. Faculty [I], will work either directly with the student [you] or in coordination with the McBurney Center to identify and provide reasonable instructional accommodations. Disability information, including instructional accommodations as part of a student’s educational record is confidential and protected under FERPA.
DIVERSITY & INCLUSION
Diversity is a source of strength, creativity, and innovation for UW-Madison. We value the contributions of each person and respect the profound ways their identity, culture, background, experience, status, abilities, and opinion enrich the university community. We commit ourselves to the pursuit of excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and diversity as inextricably linked goals. The University of Wisconsin-Madison fulfills its public mission by creating a welcoming and inclusive community for people from every background – people who as students, faculty, and staff serve Wisconsin and the world. https://diversity.wisc.edu/