I started out in my career with the goal of becoming a research psychologist. I loved the years I spent training for this career – the experiments, the debates, feeling like I had a front-row seat to watch a nearly-new science come into its own.
But as I settled into my job as a professor at a state university, I realized something was missing. Always a practical person at heart, I wanted to see that new science put to use. I especially wanted to know what it told us about all the new technologies that had begun to radically change how the world thinks about education.
I realized that most students, and most college teachers as well, haven’t the faintest idea of how learning really works. Nor do they know how technology interacts with the mind and the brain to help (or hinder) learning. And so, I set out to share this research with my fellow college teachers. I started by publishing a few articles that later blossomed into a book, Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology, published by Harvard University Press.
That book took off, opening opportunities to reach audiences in academic and corporate settings around the world. Today, that’s the kind of work I most love to do.
I’m also driven to keep investigating the relationship between technology, learning, and the mind. There's the practical issue of how remote and online learning can be made as effective - or more so - than the traditional classroom equivalent. Then there are the bigger questions of how technology is changing us. How do we pay attention in a technology-saturated world? Do today’s young people really focus differently, and is that because technology has changed their brains? Does technology change how we remember - and in that way, is it changing who we are?
When I give a talk, I start by demonstrating surprising, important principles of how the mind works, using anything from puzzles to examples from everyday life. Then I share concrete, actionable strategies about how to make those principles work for us, as we strive to succeed in an age where technology is everywhere and the ability to learn is the most valuable skill anyone can possess.
