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Talk abstract:

Despite a large literature demonstrating the importance of agency/autonomy in student motivation and achievement, there has been little focus on developing specific, practical, and implementable interventions that promote autonomy in educational settings. If anything, many practices endorsed by university teaching and learning centers, such as mandatory attendance, mandatory drafts, and syllabus quizzes, serve to undermine feelings of autonomy. Here, we briefly review the literature on the benefits of promoting agency, provide several concrete teaching strategies for doing so, and provide evidence of their efficacy. Agency-promoting teaching practices have the potential to improve student outcomes both in the classroom (i.e. more motivated students who consequently learn more) and beyond.

Biography:

Danny Oppenheimer is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University jointly appointed in Psychology and Decision Sciences who studies judgment, decision making, metacognition, learning and causal reasoning, and applies his findings to a diverse array of domains, such as charitable giving, consumer behavior, education, electoral outcomes, and how to trick students into buying him ice cream.  He is the author of over 50 peer-reviewed articles and books including "Democracy Despite Itself: Why a System that shouldn't work at all works so well" and "Psychology: The Comic Book Introduction". He has won awards for research, teaching, and humor, the latter of which is particularly inexplicable given his penchant for truly terrible puns.