Understanding Learning Styles: A Conversation with Dr. Bill Cerbin

VTLC Podcast Blog

This interview of Dr. Bill Cerbin by Dr. Nancy Chick is about the concept of "learning styles." They cover research on learning styles, myths and problems associated with them, as well as best practices for using the fundamentals of what we know about learning in the classroom. Dr. Bill Cerbin is Professor of Psychology and director of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Center for Advancing Teaching & Learning. He also directs the College Lesson Study Project, which supports instructors across the University of Wisconsin System campuses to use lesson study to improve their teaching and advance the practice of teaching in their fields. His received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology with an emphasis in Cognition and Language from the University of Chicago.
In 1998 and 2003 he was a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. His past work in the scholarship of teaching and learning focused on the development of the course portfolio as way to document scholarly inquiry into teaching, how students learn in problem-based learning environments, and teaching and learning for understanding. His recent work explores how the practice of lesson study—in which instructors jointly design, teach, observe, analyze and refine individual class lessons—can be a training ground for the scholarship of teaching and learning. He is particularly interested in methods such as lesson study that explore how and why students learn or do not learn what we teach.
--Jen Heinert, VTLC Director