Teaching and Learning blog

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PreK-12ɫèAV studentsProfessional

  • A close-up of a pair of feet in sneakers from behind, stepping off on a track.

    Self-care tips for nurses

    By ɫèAV

    As a nurse, your work entails being compassionate, ready, and strong in one of the most stressful environments. The overwhelming nature, unpredictability, and volume of your work can impact your physical and mental well-being in ways you may not realize but nevertheless feel. To avoid burnout, you have to take care of yourself while taking care of your patients.

    How burnout can affect your life

    Research findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicate that 31.5% of nurses who left their job reported burnout as a contributing reason.1

    Your well-being can be at stake if the quality and quantity of the work you’re doing surpasses the amount you can take. External stressors often lead to internal distress. Dealing with—or the inability to deal with—a high frequency of uncontrollable stressors could lead to physical weakness, depression, inadequate nutrition, and stress in your personal life.

    What are the causes of burnout?

    • Working extra hours to cover staffing issues
    • Long shifts
    • Lacking helpful supervision
    • Not getting along with colleagues
    • A high volume of patients
    • Difficult patients
    • Performance metrics that measure numbers and patient evaluations

    The warning signs of burnout include:

    • Lack of empathy and expressing indifference toward patients, colleagues, family, and friends
    • Work-related exhaustion that takes a physical and mental toll
    • Disinterest in work
    • Feeling cynical
    • Feeling depressed
    • Social disconnection

    If you are beginning to experience or already experience some or all of these signs, then you need to take a step to prioritize yourself.

    Why you should prioritize yourself

    The American Nurses Association Health Risk appraisal revealed that 68% of nurses place their patients' health, safety, and wellness before their own.2

    Showing signs of weakness or withdrawing from work shouldn’t be stigmatizing. You are human and if you neglect signs of physical, psychological, and emotional weakness, you put yourself and your patients at a greater risk. Incorporating self-care practices into your routine can improve your health, decrease stress, make your personal and professional life happier, and put you in a better position to care for others.

    Prioritize yourself with self-care

  • Student waving at a laptop while wearing headphones.

    Support every learner, with ɫèAV’s accessible learning solutions

    By ɫèAV

    Our mission is simple: to help people make progress in their lives through learning. Because wherever learning flourishes, so do people. We'll only be successful when our educational materials are accessible to all users, and we’ve long been committed to providing access to learners with disabilities. That commitment is woven into the fabric of our learning materials, development processes, innovation efforts, employee culture, and partnerships.

    We’re proud to have been recognized as a Benetech Global Certified Accessible™ (GCA) publisher. The first third-party EPUB certification program to verify eBook accessibility. (, and our new partnership with Benetech.)

    Accessibility in MyLab and Mastering

    ɫèAV’s Faculty Advisors recently led best practice webinars for our two leading learning platforms, exploring accessibility features designed to help more learners succeed. (We invite you to watch the recorded webinars: MyLab or Mastering.)

  • Photo of higher ed students studying with laptops

    Why eTextbooks are gaining popularity in Higher Ed

    By ɫèAV

    There is so much breadth and depth to what ɫèAV can do to help you and your students achieve the best learning outcomes. Consider the following features and benefits that eTextbooks offer. And learn why a growing audience of instructors and students are taking advantage of our remarkable ɫèAV+ subscription capabilities. In fact, nearly 5 million subscribers have embraced the ɫèAV+ subscription platform.

    To begin, we will focus on eTextbooks. They are more popular than ever. Don’t just take our word for it. A great deal of research over the past five years shows that well-designed digital content can be understood as effectively as print and offers added benefits for students.*

    Remember, not all of your students are fully acquainted with all the capabilities of eTextbooks. Take the time at the beginning of your next course to be sure you communicate all the features and benefits of any new eTextbook, as well as ɫèAV+.

    Affordability

    In many cases digital eTextbooks are up to 80% cheaper than traditional printed textbooks. With our ɫèAV+ platform, students can subscribe to their course etextbooks at one low monthly rate or pay for the semester upfront. At the end of their subscription term, students have the flexibility to cancel, renew, or change titles to accommodate their learning needs. ɫèAV offers a range of features that appeal to a variety of learning styles. The user experience is elegant and intuitive.  Naturally that means the navigation makes it easy for students to make their way through the content. Many of our etextbook titles have embedded audio and video to engage students and help them understand difficult concepts in the course. Full audiobooks are available for most titles which can help with comprehension, retention, and gives students the option to listen on the go.

    In addition, no one should underestimate the value of adjusting the speed of any audio. Certain students may choose a slower speed, but many prefer to accelerate the audio for more efficiency. In addition, a student listening may strengthen comprehension further and even activate the highlighting of the text in sync with the audio.

    Interactive features like charts and diagrams make it easier for students who may prefer to explore and analyze such engaging visuals.

    Interactivity strengthens how students study

    Markup and additional interactive features make it easier for studying than ever before. They can customize the display of content. And students are happy to know that once they return to any content, the eTextbook remembers where they left off and the learner can dive right back in.

    Additional benefits for studying include:

    • Notetaking
    • Pre-built flashcards**
    • Create your own flashcards
    • Highlighting
    • Bookmarking
    • Adjusting the point size of the text 

    And the robust enhanced search engine even offers an excellent sub-menu referencing groupings of relevant videos, key terms and interactive media. In fact, ɫèAV+ is exploring a possible new etextbook feature regarding the way students learn, from an individual experience to a social one. Students can see who else is studying, start discussions and post links and videos. The social experience within the eTextbook is global, giving all users the ability to engage. The experience is not limited to students in a certain class at a specific university.

    Encourage your students to learn in the way they learn best.

    Content Mastery

    A study by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that when students take courses that engage digitally and in-person, content mastery can occur twice as quickly, and pass rates for at-risk students can increase by 33%.

    ɫèAV+. Anywhere, anytime

    The ɫèAV+ subscription platform is the ideal way students can access eTextbooks. Among other compelling features, with ɫèAV+ they can consolidate all their eTextbooks, videos, audio, study tools, and supportive content all in one place. Naturally, this allows your students to work more efficiently.

    There’s an app for this

    With the ɫèAV+ mobile app, students can pick up at any point where they left off and learn on the go. Learners can easily read offline right in our app. So they can have more freedom to make the most of their day. Here are some of the main reasons the platform and the app are so appealing.

    Once selected, they have immediate access to the content. Students can learn on the go (with online and offline access). They can learn with their eTextbooks wherever life takes them. ɫèAV+ offers students instant access to their eTextbooks, videos and study tools, all in one place. With easy access through a subscription or their ѲⳢ® or ѲٱԲ® course, our intuitive interface, enhanced search, highlights, notes, and audiobooks allow them to choose how they learn best.

    Meet your students where they are

    So why not meet students where they are, figuratively and literally. Everyone knows they are often on the run. The content is optimized for a learner’s phone or another mobile device. It’s a no-brainer for today’s tech-savvy generation. Your students are certainly accustomed to processing information from smart phones and other mobile devices. 

    We are also mindful of working learners. The convenience of ɫèAV+ gives them the flexibility to learn wherever and whenever best suits their needs and their busy work schedule. Any student on the go can listen to an eTextbook while cooking, cleaning, driving or while tackling whatever task happens to be in front of them.

    Lastly, be sure to take full advantage of our grade-technology too. It’s a familiar feature for your class and a time-saver for you. So you can focus on additional priorities.

    Go ahead. Be the best instructor you can be. Learn more about eTextbooks and ɫèAV+ today.

    *Webinar: /us/about/news-events/events/2021/12/digital-reading-in-the-modern-world.html

    ** Available in most titles

  • Students engaged in their work online using MyLab’s tools

    A Perfect Match for Student Success: UMGC and MyLab

    By ɫèAV

    The big challenge

    The University of Maryland Global Campus made a major decision several years ago. Instead of investing in curriculum from various publishers, the school opted to try Open Education Resources or OER back in 2014. It was a way to ease the financial burden for students.

    Years later in 2018 the school, which today has a worldwide enrollment of 305,000, reduced and in some cases eliminated developmental math as a pre-requisite. It proved to be a disaster. Unfortunately, OER didn’t provide nearly enough critical support for students who were ill-prepared for college level courses.

    A perfect fit for success!

    Given the nature of the challenge, UMGC Math and Statistics Program Director John Beyers partnered with Tiffany DePriter, Statistics Coordinator/Instructor, to explore possible solutions. They decided to use an adaptive resource and elected to pilot ɫèAV’s MyLab and compare it to ALEKS from McGraw Hill. After extensive testing and evaluations, MyLab was selected primarily because of its continuous assessment approach to support each student’s individual pace along the way. In addition, it was an ideal way to customize the learning and fully engage with students using the remarkable array of tools that MyLab provides.

  • Three people sitting at a desk, having a conversation.

    The importance of promoting mental wellness to your students

    By ɫèAV

    What’s more than a pandemic problem?

    Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. colleges and universities have faced a mounting mental health crisis impacting students of higher education. Compounding this issue, traditional counseling centers at schools can no longer mitigate the issue and keep up with the surging demand.

    How bad is it? In a national survey conducted in 2021, nearly 75% of students reported moderate or severe psychological distress (National College Health Assessment, American College Health Association, 2021).

    A comprehensive study by the Healthy Minds Network and Sarah Lipson, a Boston University School of Public Health assistant professor of health law, policy, and management, resulted in startling findings. Their survey of 350,000 students at over 300 campuses, showed college student mental health consistently declined nationally from 2013 to 2021 with an overall 135% increase in depression and 110% increase in anxiety.

    Moreover, the study showed mental health problems on those campuses had actually doubled!

    Lipson and her colleagues also discovered mental issues take a disproportionate toll on students of color. The study became the first long-term, multicampus one of its kind to outline differences in treatment and the pervasiveness of mental health issues.

    What’s causing this downward trend?

    Although today’s students tend to seek out mental health treatment sooner than prior generations did, collegiate life can be especially overwhelming for many. The impact of COVID-19, financial challenges, and the ongoing challenge of balancing school and work schedules can contribute to the problem.

    Freshman year for many reveals another reality for newly enrolled undergrads: Living apart from the direct emotional support of parents and siblings. That first semester comes with many surprises, and many aren’t prepared to navigate all the challenges alone.

    Also factor in that these young adults haven’t even finished developing physically yet. The brain’s prefrontal cortex does not finish developing and maturing until the mid- to late 20s. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and controlling impulses (National Institutes of Health, NIH Publication No. 20-MH-8078), and yet each student must absorb a slew of new information, people, and places — often all at once.

    According to Lipson, “75% of lifetime mental health problems will onset by age 24.” Given that fact, it’s easy to see why they need our help. Addressing the support gap, however, takes a concerted effort including a devoted effort by faculty and staff.

    Mental wellness to the rescue

    Maybe as an educator, you are looking for ways you can help support your students’ mental health to navigate through this ‘new normal’ world. This article will delve into some simple ways to do that.

    5 immediate steps to help improve student mental wellness —

    Educators like you can learn how to start changing the course of this trend by taking the following steps. Not just for students, but for the local and global communities we share as well as society as a whole.

    1. Get creative with your approach in helping students

    Perhaps your colleagues and you are already helping learners to receive at least some degree of mental wellness support. Rethinking the way you do this, however, could greatly improve their future wellbeing.

    Increasingly, schools have established more resources like same-day intake and single counseling sessions (versus making students in need wait months). Has your school done this? If so, encourage those needing help to connect to these services. Experts have found this new approach to be more practical than providing only traditional therapy to an entire student population.

    Just remember to help manage student expectations of the system as campus clinics can’t always see them at a moment’s notice. By dialing ‘9-8-8’ on their mobile phone though anyone can reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline — any time, any day.

    If your school doesn't have on-campus support, a great resource of national hotlines can be found on the .

    Thinking even a little out of the box can be what some students most welcome. For instance, if a learner is struggling in one of your courses, they may benefit from a workshop on sleep, time or stress management, and goal setting.

    “This increase in demand has challenged institutions to think holistically and take a multifaceted approach to supporting students,” says Kevin Shollenberger, Johns Hopkins University’s vice provost for student health and well-being. “It really has to be everyone’s responsibility at the university to create a culture of well-being.”

    2. Be more aware

    It can’t hurt to become more observant both in and outside the lab, lecture hall, or classroom.

    Someone right under your nose who’s enrolled in one of your classes may be experiencing a very challenging time, but perhaps you can become that vulnerable student’s first line of support at the school.

    Maybe several of your students are dealing with all the woes from the pandemic and facing loneliness or roommate conflicts for the very first time. Confidential peer counseling could be a valuable resources for them.

    A kind, sincere suggestion by a trusted professor to seek professional help could be more than welcomed by the learner. Far from home, you could be that authority figure who cared enough to reach out, something they may remember for the rest of their life.

    Signs a student may be facing a mental crisis:

    • Dramatic body weight changes
    • Appearing disheveled (e.g.: lethargic, inebriated, etc.)
    • No longer submitting any classwork
    • Often tardy for class
    • Exhibiting sudden behavioral changes (i.e.: extreme mood swings)

    Any one or combination of these signs may indicate they are facing a situational or more grave mental health issue. And, there are others of course.

    Not all the signs are obvious ones though. Many go unseen and unheard. Students may find it easier to hide their sorrow, but not their happiness.

    Keep in mind that students with acute matters (e.g.: sexual assault post-trauma, emotional abuse, depression, and eating disorders) will require one-on-one therapy with professional counselors. Never attempt to counsel them yourselves. Urge them to reach out to a licensed medical professional for treatment.

    Sometimes, academic advisers, athletic coaches, and staff are formally trained to spot and monitor students who appear distressed. Even Penn State’s food service staff are empowered to refer students exhibiting eating disorders.

    3. Help students tap into their school’s wellness resources

    Just asking a student, “Is everything going okay?” can be telling. Their answer might reveal they need help getting assistance, especially if facing a type of emotional or physical communication barrier.

    So prepare for this! Be sure you’re aware of all the school’s mental wellness resources on campus and online support and how you can react.

    DukeReach at Duke University, for instance, allows anyone on campus to communicate concern about a student if uncertain how to proceed. Trained providers can then offer a form of support such as a welfare check.

    Find out about your school’s referral and reporting systems and how to strictly abide by them. Now’s the time to know. Not after the fact.

    Your referral may include calling the counseling center to make an appointment on behalf of a troubled student who may be less likely to seek help on their own. Other learners may just need a teacher to suggest a wellness workshop.

    Shollenberger emphasizes, “Faculty aren’t expected to be counselors, just to show a sense of care that they notice something might be going on, and to know where to refer students.”

    When students come to class after hearing about (or even witnessing/experiencing) a major traumatic event, just having a teacher encourage a class discussion about that topic can help appease them emotionally — versus a teacher ‘sweeping it under the rug.’ At Johns Hopkins, Shollenberger and his team worked with faculty on how to do this after students felt disturbed the Ukraine War wasn’t mentioned in class.

    4. Encourage mindfulness

    Do your students practice mindfulness? Many may not even know what it means. By explaining it, you can possibly help them to help themselves to mental wellness.

    Mindfulness can help individuals to reflect and assess new information, but also manage their own thoughts. It can enable us to avoid anxious feelings when we learn to step back and focus on the moment.

    Students will find it overwhelming to study and absorb details and concepts under duress. Anyone would. But, when a student can just be present in the moment, they can observe and absorb more and respond more appropriately.

    Right about now, you may be thinking, “Hey, I could benefit from practicing mindfulness more myself.” After all, we’re all human. No one is immune to distress.

    Ashley Lodge, Global Mindfulness Lead for ɫèAV says, “Understanding the two modes of mind, ‘doing’ and ‘being’, and being able to shift the gear between the two, helped me better navigate daily life. It’s not some kind of quick fix. It takes daily practice (meditation) to help rewire the brain towards calmer, wiser ways of thinking and approaching life.”

    Many schools support cultural mindfulness, too. Their student counselors will at times immerse themselves within academic units, becoming cultural experts. They study how engineering learners may, for instance, differ from their liberal arts counterparts or vice versa. Meanwhile, it presents an opportunity to be more accessible to them.

    At ɫèAV, we actively practice mindfulness by asking “What if?” and relentlessly innovating new possibilities for everyone with speed, agility, and integrity. It’s not ‘lip service.’ We truly want to leave a lasting impact on everyone we serve and hope you do, too.

    5. Stay informed and be part of the solution

    Do you know how your own school is tackling its student mental health crisis? If not, it’s critical you find out right away. Educate yourself on what can be done by learning the effective ways other colleges or universities are succeeding and bring them to the attention of your administration as soon as possible. We’re all in this together!

    What’s working at your school? What’s not and why? New opportunities may exist for your campus health clinic to implement soon or the near future.

    Which threats can be averted or mitigated? As an educator, you may have the knowledge, experience, personality traits, or communication skills to participate in a new wellness initiative. Yes, you too, marketing, music education, and social study professors! Which lessons can we apply as learned from business, culture, sociology or history?

    Many schools have been working full-time already to think out of the box and apply new methods. For instance, have you heard of “Let’s Talk” programs? Students can just drop in for an informal one-on-one session with a counselor.

    More and more, colleges and universities are contracting with telehealth platforms to ensure that services are available whenever students need them while adding on-campus and virtual resources through apps. Maybe your school is, too.

    Penn State offers a counselor-staffed crisis line that’s available anytime to students who are ready to talk or requesting an urgent in-person response. Meanwhile, Johns Hopkins started a behavioral health crisis support program that dispatches crisis clinicians with public safety officers to handle wellness checks.

    Those are just a few examples we can all learn from.

    By creating a culture of wellness with your colleagues, staff and students, you can help reverse this downward trend, one learner at a time.

    Educating ourselves though is the proactive first step.

  • Young woman with glasses, sitting outside with a laptop, smiling at her phone

    The top 5 Revel features you should be using

    By ɫèAV

    Looking for an easier, more dynamic way to inspire your students’ learning? Revel® teaching and learning platform from ɫèAV will feel like a joy compared to textbooks as it integrates videos and dynamic interactives into compelling digital narratives.

    The platform keeps your students on pace, provides a clear view of their engagement and performance, and is easily accessed from the first day of classes. It puts them in the digital driver’s seat and on a smoother road to success.

    Revel improves students' course grades and exam scores. In our numerous research studies, the data show that students who engage with Revel are more prepared for class and get better grades. In addition, instructors benefit when they use Revel performance data to identify struggling students.

    Taking a moment now to learn about Revel’s top features can help improve the learning experience for your learners of today and tomorrow.

    Revel’s top 5 features —

    1. Educator Dashboard: offers an at-a-glance look at overall class performance. It helps instructors more easily identify and contact struggling and low-activity students, ensuring that the class stays on pace. By identifying at-risk students you can implement early intervention strategies to help them succeed in the course.

    2. Embedded Assessments allow for practice and review, improving comprehension, filling learning gaps, and providing feedback. Students can practice and quiz themselves to review concepts while easily assessing their understanding to better prepare.

    3. Shared Writing Assignments foster critical thinking through writing without significantly impacting your grading burden. Throughout each narrative, self-paced journaling prompts encourage students to express their thoughts without breaking stride in their reading.

    Assignable shared writing activities direct students to share written responses with classmates, promoting peer discussion. Essays integrated directly within Revel allow you to assign the precise writing tasks they need.

    4. Shared Media Assignments enable instructors and students to post and respond to videos and other media. Students can also record and upload their own presentations for grading, comments, or peer review.

    Video quizzes engage students while checking their understanding of concepts. Instructors can share videos accompanied by time-stamped multiple-choice questions.

    5. Instructor App enables instructors to easily view performance insights and contact struggling and low-activity students to help them get back on track – anytime, anywhere.

    Teaching tools to love —

    Inspiring active learning enables students to explore, contextualize information, and apply concepts as they read. It unlocks students’ curiosity and immerses them in subjects, reading and practicing in one continuous experience. Research shows this approach leads to higher recall of key concepts versus passive engagement alone.

    Notetaking, highlighting and more make learning fully digital and highly engaging, providing students everything needed for a course — through one continuous, integrated learning experience. Highlighting, note taking, and a glossary let them read and study however they prefer. Instructors can add notes, too, including reminders or study tips.

    Monitoring student progress allows educators to monitor student progress on assigned reading, which is a good indicator of how the class is doing. By tracking reading and having the option to make it a percentage of the final grade, they can hold students accountable and keep them on track.

    It's a smooth ride to the future with Revel. Read how from other instructors and the impact Revel has had in their classroom and the lives of their students:

  • Vermeer's Woman Holding A Balance

    Vermeer’s Woman Holding A Balance

    By ɫèAV

    Johannes Vermeer’s Woman Holding A Balance was the featured art in the October HSS eNews.

    Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch artist. Created c. 1664, Woman Holding A Balance is oil on canvas measuring 15 5/8” x 14”. The image is courtesy of the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

  • Improve learning by adding video

    Improve learning by adding video

    By ɫèAV

    Video is everywhere. With more than a billion hours of video footage viewed on YouTube every day,1 it is a medium that most students are both familiar and comfortable with. The question is not whether to use videos in higher education, but how to use them to improve learner outcomes.There is plenty of research that touches on the role of video in learning, and there are even some studies that specifically examine the different ways of using video in university or college courses.

    After reviewing and analyzing this research, we’re confident that most higher education courses could improve learner outcomes by supplementing instruction and other learning content with relevant educational videos.

    Here are three reasons why.

    1. Students want to learn from videos

    Video is part of higher education even when it’s not officially part of the learning experience. Some higher education students prefer videos to written sources and many will seek out subject-related videos on YouTube, even when they’re not assigned.

    In a survey of hundreds of business students:

    • 71% said they used YouTube as part of their academic learning
    • 70.5% believed they could learn a lot about a subject by watching related videos instead of reading a book2

    In a 2020 study, a group of higher education students was given 30 minutes of online research time to learn enough about a topic to write a brief summary. On average, the students spent 8.5 of their 30 minutes watching videos. Only 15.7% of the students watched no videos at all.3

    Studies also seem to show that the appeal of video is not limited to particular subjects or learning preferences.4 Whatever the course, and whatever the makeup of the student body, including videos can engage students in learning.

    2. Supplemental videos improve learning

    Videos clearly appeal to students, but do they actually help them learn? When combined with other learning methods, there is evidence that they can.

    A 2021 study looked at different ways of using videos in higher education courses. The researchers found that pivoting the course to video — dropping existing teaching methods and having students watch videos instead — did improve learning somewhat.

    But the biggest improvements came when video was added to the existing course content, rather than replacing it.5

    This may be because adding video gives students more ways to understand the content. If the learning didn’t take hold from a lecture or a written text, maybe it would from a video. Whereas when video replaced other methods, if a student didn’t grasp the content from the video, they had no alternative ways in.

    3. Videos can directly affect learning

    Does including videos improve learning by making the course more engaging, or do the videos themselves help improve learning? Understanding this helps determine the best types of video to include in higher education courses.

    A 2014 study experimented with integrating different types of videos into lectures. When the videos were mainly entertaining, students’ motivation and engagement improved. Higher motivation and engagement are associated with better learning outcomes.

    But when the videos were mainly educational and directly relevant to the lecture topic, students performed better on post-lecture quizzes than those who attended a lecture without videos.6

    This shows that while videos can affect learning by engaging students, they can also have a direct effect on students’ knowledge.

    Improving learning for students at all experience levels

    To summarize, based on a range of studies:

    • higher education courses should include videos
    • videos should supplement, not replace, existing course content and instruction
    • videos should be educational in nature and directly relevant to the subject

    When videos are integrated into higher education courses in this way, students — whatever their previous academic history — are more likely to outperform their predicted grades.7

  • How unlimited information actually limits learning

    How unlimited information actually limits learning

    By ɫèAV

    Once, students looking to supplement their knowledge of a topic had to rely on the limited selection of books in their college library. Today, college students have nearly unlimited information at their fingertips. But does more information always equal better learning?

    A number of recent research studies suggest that in fact, providing students with a more limited set of high-quality resources chosen specifically for the course can lead to better outcomes than when students supplement their knowledge using the internet.

    It’s true that there is a large amount of high quality information available online, on nearly every topic imaginable. It’s also true that searching, assessing, filtering, and making use of online resources are valuable 21st-century skills. So it’s understandable when higher education courses call for students to look online for sources to cite, or to supplement their knowledge of the course subject.

    But that’s just the thing: finding information online and judging its reliability are skills in themselves. This complicates learning, because:

    • not all students in the course will have those skills to the same degree
    • they’re not usually the skills the course is teaching (or assessing)

    Reliable, or just familiar?

    As you may expect from a group of people who have largely grown up with the internet, higher education students know that not everything they find online is reliable. They do think about the origins of the information they find, and judge whether they are credible.

    However, students don’t always know how to make these kinds of judgments accurately.

    In one 2020 study, higher education students were provided with several items from different sources and prompted to write about the items’ perspectives. More than 2 in 5 of the students (41%) assumed that certain items were credible because they recognized the source.1 They thought they were judging the reliability of the information, but were really rating the familiarity of the sources.

    Another study, also published in 2020, asked economics students to use a search engine to investigate the truth of several claims. Again, these students ended up relying heavily on sites they were familiar with, rather than truly valid or reliable sources. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of their most cited sources was Wikipedia.2

    Of course, not all students make the same mistakes. For example, a 2017 study found that students who score higher for reading comprehension are also more likely to find relevant, valid results when using search engines.3 Students with previous experience of searching for academic sources may also be more accurate judges of the information they find.

    But this presents another challenge to learning. It means that in courses that ask students to supplement their subject knowledge by searching the internet, those with lower reading comprehension and less academic experience are at an unfair disadvantage.

    Best use of effort

    Even with sophisticated search engines, sifting the vast quantities of information on the internet for relevant sources takes time and effort. So does assessing the reliability of each source.

    These activities also add to students’ cognitive load: the amount of brainpower needed to complete a task.

    Students’ time, effort, and cognitive load are all finite resources. What they expend on finding and assessing sources, they aren’t using to actually increase their knowledge.

    All of this means that providing students with a hand-picked suite of high quality resources, chosen specifically for the course, is better for learning than leaving them to find their own online.

    Providing learning resources as part of the course levels the playing field. Students with different levels of reading comprehension and academic experience will all have equally valid, reliable materials to learn from.

    And because students tend to trust material provided as part of the course, they won’t use up time, effort, or cognitive load gauging whether the material is reliable.

    All in one

    This isn’t a call to send students back to the college library. Even if the world wide web isn’t the best environment for learning, there are still clear benefits to digital learning.

    In fact, digital platforms allow us to free up even more of students’ cognitive load for learning: by providing suites of reliable resources under the same roof as learning and assessment.

    _____________________________________

    Sources

    1 Banerjee, Zlatkin-Troitschanskaia, & Roeper, 2020

    2 Nagel et al., 2020

    3 Hahnel et al., 2017