Todd Zakrajsek

Center for Faculty Excellence
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Five Research Findings and Three Activities That Will Change the Way You Teach

This fast-paced interactive session is based on recent studies in cognitive and social psychology. These findings, all exceptionally important to student learning, will make you think about the way you teach. You will also experience three easy classroom activities that can be used in almost any class to improve student learning. This session is designed to give you evidence about how students learn, demonstrate methods to get students involved, and present the material in a way that is easy to implement.

Biography

Todd Zakrajsek serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Previously, Dr. Zakrajsek was the founding director of The Faculty Center for Innovative Teaching (FaCIT) at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant. FaCIT constitutes a centralized faculty development office, providing resources in the areas of teaching, learning, and technology. Dr. Zakrajsek also previously served as the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Southern Oregon University, where he also taught in the psychology department as a tenured associate professor. Dr. Zakrajsek has written two introductory psychology instructor's manuals for McGraw-Hill and a student study guide for Addison-Wesley. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from Ohio University. Dr. Zakrajsek has provided workshop sessions and keynote conference presentations in 26 states and 3 countries in the past several years. He is the recipient of a 2004 national innovation in faculty development award for the development of his concept of “The 5-minute Workshop.”