Mechanical references can describe one way to stimulate learning in a student.

This is the philosophy of Tamara Rosier, a candidate for director of the Faculty Center for Innovative Learning.

“I envision teaching as pulling levers, which turn gears,” Rosier said. “When you can pull these levers, that’s when learning can begin.”

Rosier presented her lecture, “Learning Levers: Applying Research Themes to Improve Learning,” during an open forum Wednesday at Bovee University Center.

Rosier, the final candidate for FaCIT director, currently holds a position as Assistant Director of Assessment at Grand Valley State University. Her role at CMU, should she get selected, would be to help professors evaluate themselves and advise them on how to best teach their students.

Rosier said her teaching philosophy is built around pulling four different levers. The first lever is the motivation to learn.

The second lever is metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Rosier said this consists of monitoring your progress and making changes or adapting as you learn.

“There’s many times that students don’t know that they know something,” Rosier said. “Students don’t get that learning is difficult. We have to teach this to our students. This isn’t an optional thing.”

Lever three is transfer learning, she said. The ability to extend learning from one context to another is key.

The final lever is memory, where prior knowledge is connected, patterns are recognized and the information becomes useful.

Some at the forum thought Rosier was attentive to get students to learn.

“She reminded me of the need in getting others to think of how they’re thinking about their own learning,” said Reo McBride, director for the Center for Instructional Design.

McBride is designing a course for faculty to teach them how to develop online courses. He said the presentation would affect how he designs his course.

Some attendees also felt Rosier’s philosophy is very important to understand.

“I think brain research is really important to know so faculty can know what is going on in their students’ heads, so they can structure their classes and enable learning,” said Ireta Ekstrom, instructional developer for FaCIT.

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E-mail the author: Griffin Fraley