Episode 094- Stephen Kosslyn

In October 2020, Stephen Kosslyn published a new book called Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive. The book draws on Kosslyn’s experiences at Minerva, but also his very long and impressive career in higher education. He is the founder, president emeritus, and chief academic officer of Foundry College, which provides high-quality, research-informed online education for working adults. He’s also the founder and president of Active Learning Sciences, a consulting group that help institutions adopt active learning principles in online education. Prior to that, he was founding dean and chief academic officer at the Minerva Schools at the Keck Graduate Institute. And that all came after an amazing career as a professor of psychology at Harvard University and Stanford University. We have a great interview with Stephen Kosslyn to share with you. He recently facilitated a virtual workshop here at Vanderbilt on his new book, and we took the opportunity to talk with him for the podcast. You’ll hear a new voice in this interview: Julaine Fowlin, the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching’s new assistant director for instructional design. Julaine helped organized Stephen’s workshop, and she had a lot of great questions to ask him about his book. Kosslyn goes through his five principles for active learning, offers practical strategies for implementing these principles in the virtual classroom, and speaks to the important role motivation plays in learning. Links • Active Learning Online: Five Principles that Make Online Courses Come Alive, https://www.alinealearning.org/kosslyn-active-learning-online • Active Learning Sciences, https://www.activelearningsciences.com/ • Foundry College, https://foundrycollege.org/ • Minerva Schools at KGI, https://www.minerva.kgi.edu/ • Derek’s sketchnotes on Stephen Kosslyn’s 2014 talk about Minerva Schools, https://www.flickr.com/photos/derekbruff/15360156349/ • Jigsaw infographic, https://www.flickr.com/photos/vandycft/32869991478/ • “From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Robert Barr and John Tagg, Change Magazine, 1995, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00091383.1995.10544672 • Julaine Fowlin on Twitter, https://twitter.com/julaine_fowlin