Document Depot

Welcome to the ATL Document Depot

The Depot is a library of helpers, templates, and handouts used by the ATL for programs, consultations, and collaborations. Here you will find a miscellany of items that we hope you will find interesting and helpful.

We are continually refreshing and revising our materials. We also use the same or very similar handouts in more than one offered workshop or program. Priority always goes to providing services and programming with the depot being updated as we have opportunity or after significant changes prompt an update to resynchronize the Depot with our current toolbox.

If you missed a handout at an ATL event, this is a great place to start.

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Noteworthy Articles

• Barr, Robert B. and John Tagg. "From Teaching to Learning--A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education." Change 27, no. 6 (Nov 1995): 12-25.
  • A landmark article published in 1995 that had significant effect on perspectives of higher education. Still referenced and cited frequently.

• Bjork, E. L. and R. A. Bjork. "Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning." In M. A. Gernsbacher and J. Pomerantz (eds.), Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society, 2nd edition (New York: Worth, 2014), 59-68.
  • Book chapter made available by the authors via https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-19926-008.

• Dunlosky, John, Katherine A. Rawson, et al. "Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology." Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1, (2013): 4-58.
  • ABSTRACT: Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but a central premise of this monograph is that one part of a solution involves helping students to better regulate their learning through the use of effective learning techniques. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologists have been developing and evaluating easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. We selected techniques that were expected to be relatively easy to use and hence could be adopted by many students. Also, some techniques (e.g., highlighting and rereading) were selected because students report relying heavily on them, which makes it especially important to examine how well they work. The techniques include elaborative interrogation, self-explanation, summarization, highlighting (or underlining), the keyword mnemonic, imagery use for text learning, rereading, practice testing, distributed practice, and interleaved practice. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks.

• Halpern, Diane F. and Milton D. Hakel. "Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond: Teaching for Long-Term Retention and Transfer." Change 35, no. 4 (2003): 36-41.

• Keeley, Jared W., Emad Ismail and William Buskist. "Excellent Teachers’ Perspectives on Excellent Teaching." Teaching of Psychology 43, no. 3 (2016): 175-9.
  • ABSTRACT: Studies of master teaching have investigated a set of qualities that define excellent teaching. However, few studies have investigated master teachers’ perspectives on excellent teaching and how it may differ from other faculty or students. The current study investigated award-winning teachers’ (N = 50) ratings of the 28 qualities on the teacher behavior checklist. There was substantial overlap in the importance placed upon various teaching qualities among award-winning teachers and other faculty. However, excellent teachers placed more value upon being prepared and forming rapport with students. Full professors placed more importance on several teaching qualities than associate and assistant professors. Teaching training programs should include broad definitions of excellent teaching that incorporate components that some faculty may otherwise overlook.

• Owens, D.C., Sadler, T.D., Barlow, A.T. et al. "Student Motivation from and Resistance to Active Learning Rooted in Essential Science Practices." Research in Science Education (December 2017):1-25.
  • ABSTRACT: Several studies have found active learning to enhance students’ motivation and attitudes. Yet, faculty indicate that students resist active learning and censure them on evaluations after incorporating active learning into their instruction, resulting in an apparent paradox. We argue that the disparity in findings across previous studies is the result of variation in the active learning instruction that was implemented. The purpose of this study was to illuminate sources of motivation from and resistance to active learning that resulted from a novel, exemplary active-learning approach rooted in essential science practices and supported by science education literature.

• Harnish, R. J., K. R. Bridges, D. N. Sattler, M. L. Signorella, M. Munson, eds. The Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning. Downloaded from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, 2018. [Recommended by Dr. Karenna Malavanti, Baylor Department of Psychology and Neuroscience.]
  • ABSTRACT: Over the past 50 years, we have witnessed a revolution in how technology has affected teaching and learning. Beginning in the 1970s with the use of television in the classroom, to video teleconferencing in the 1980s, to computers in the classroom in the 1990s, to the social media technologies of today, advances in information technology are affecting how students learn and how faculty teach. Indeed, recent research suggests that information technologies may be both beneficial and harmful to how students learn. Some findings (e.g., Green & Bavelier, 2012) suggest that today’s students have improved visual-spatial capabilities, reaction times, and the capacity to identify details among clutter but show a decline in attention and critical thinking compared to yesterday’s students. Thus, the challenge for faculty is to determine which technology to employ so that it will facilitate learning for students. This is no small feat as each new wave of advancements in information technology has produced an ever-increasing variety of tools from which to choose.

Regarding original content accessible on this site:

Copyright © 2018 Baylor University. Permission is granted to non-profit educational institutions to reproduce and distribute for internal use content from www.baylor.edu/atl created by the Academy for Teaching and Learning, Baylor University, or Baylor personnel provided that authorship and Baylor University copyright are acknowledged.