Faculty: Discover what makes ideas “stick” for students

Despite the amount of time most people spend in classrooms during their formal education, people often only remember a few concepts here and there.

So what makes some ideas “stick” in the minds of people long after they heard them, while other seem to magically disappear from their consciousness almost immediately after the experience is over?

Made to Stick: Why some ideas survive and others die by Chip and Dan Heath explores this phenomenon and the factors that help to make ideas stay vividly and indelibly in the minds of people. They have recently added to their work with a companion piece, Making Teaching Stick, which identifies some ways that can help ideas in the classroom stick.

The next University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education will address what the book suggests about the underlying causes of the “stickiness” of ideas and how that knowledge can be adapted to benefit faculty, so that what they teach is more likely to leave a lasting impression in the minds of students.

This session will be held Thursday, Nov. 5, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Allen Memorial Medical Library’s Herrick Room (use Adelbert Road doors).

Pizza and sodas will be provided at this session. RSVP to ucite@case.edu.