Office of Teaching Effectiveness and Innovation

Playlist #20 Learning About Learning

gears turning in cartoon head

Explore how learning science can inform your course design, assessment, and classroom activities. This playlist highlights evidence-based strategies that help students lean more effectively through inclusive assessment options, retrieval and interleaving practices, and insights from neuroscience.

The Most Powerful Sentence I Started Saying in My Math Classes

Try, fail, repeat until success

Early in my teaching, I started noticing the same thing happening in almost every class.
I’d finish working through an example, turn to my students, and ask, “Does that make sense?”
Most of the time, I’d get a room full of nods. Great, I thought. We’re ready to move on.
Then I’d give them a similar problem to work on by themselves.
Almost immediately, someone would raise a hand.
“Where do I start?”
“I don’t know what to do next.”
I remember thinking, We just worked through a problem like this together. What changed?