How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (Teaching and Learning in Higher Education)

This is a very good book on learning. It approaches the subject from a biological perspective, explaining learning’s roots in evolution, and then goes on to build from that foundation. I also appreciate the layout of the book with summaries of key ideas from chapters, as well as text boxes inside chapters that focus on ideas. It also is a wonderful resource with a bibliography packed with articles and books of interest. There are two things to consider, though. First, the book bases much of its findings on the work of exemplary college faculty—and sometimes effective learning practices are very much the product of particular personalities and situations that are not easily generalized. Second, if you are already well versed in the scholarship of teaching and learning, some of what is said here will be review. But even given all that, this is an excellent resource.

How Humans Learn is a great book for any teacher or parent, or anyone just wanting to know more about how we learn. It takes the onus off of how we teach and focuses instead on how students learn to help inform our teaching practices. Fantastic examples, witty humor and great writing make this book not only full of great information, but a joy to read. You will want a notepad and pen with you as you will highlight and take so many ideas and sources away with you.

I found this a great read, especially for anyone involved in education at any level. The final chapter, "failure", may better serve as the first chapter and discussion topic rather than the last.

The first chapter alone sent me scuttling away on a multitude of excursions to where Eyler had left breadcrumbs and signposts for further investigation. Well, and so when the author achieves with his/her reader what the reader hopes to achieve with his/her own students, no further analysis of the book seems necessary.

This book looks at teaching and learning in way that manages to be both highly scientific and comfortable all at once. Dr. Eyler is engaging, and gets and holds your attention effortlessly. A must for anyone in higher education.

This is by far one of the most intriguing reads about humans learning I have gotten my hands on. Thank you! It’s well written and well informed.

Great!!

In the new book How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories of Effective College Teaching, Josh Eyler, director of Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, starts from the premise that we already know a whole lot about what works in college teaching. What Elyer wants to know is, why does it work? Although trained in the humanities, he spent five years reading deeply and widely in the sciences to answer that question. In this book, he synthesizes what he found under five headings: curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure. Teaching that really facilitates learning accounts for these central features of how human beings learn. The book is informative, engaging, and takes us deeper than the nuts and bolts of teaching, just as we would like our students to go deeper than the nuts and bolts of our disciplines. I so appreciate how Eyler constantly brings us back to the fact that teaching and learning are human activities: human beings have big questions, real feelings, complicated relationships, a hunger for what’s real, and genuine limitations—and all of which factor into our learning. With this book, we can see that these dynamics aren’t soft: they’re science.