Main description:

Transforming Learning Through Tangible Instruction offers a transformative, student-centered approach to higher education pedagogy that integrates embodied cognition into classroom practice. Evidence across disciplines makes clear that people learn with their bodies as well as their brains, but no previous book has provided evidence-based guidance for adopting and refining its practice in colleges and universities. Collecting findings from cognitive science, educational neuroscience, learning theories, and beyond, this volume's unique approach-radical yet practical, effective yet low-cost-will have profound implications for higher education faculty and administrators engaged in teaching and learning. Seven concise chapters explore how physical objects, hands-on making, active construction, and other elements of body and environment can enhance comprehension, memory, and individual and collaborative learning.

Contents:

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Unnatural Acts: The problem with what we do now

Interlude A: The Crocheted Hyperbolic Plane

Chapter 2. The Embodied Learner: Thinking with the whole self

Interlude B: Molecular Models

Chapter 3. Thinking With Things

Interlude C: Diagrams

Chapter 4. How Things Shape Our Thinking

Interlude D: Qualitative Research Software

Chapter 5. Abstraction Reconsidered

Interlude E. Designing the Future World

Chapter 6. Embodiment Revisited

Interlude F: The Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Design

Chapter 7. A Vibrant Learning Ecosystem