Make it easy

Students learn both material and how to learn.
To teach material, make the learning as easy as possible.
To teach how to learn, do this \emph{explicitly}:
don't make it a trial by fire.

"""
Students need to become active learners.

me: sure, but teach it explicitly:
don't make it a trial by fire

EG of throwing in the deep end,
or beating with a stick until they figure out how to fight back
"""

since not taught explicitly,
figure out ad hoc tricks

There's little value in figuring out your own learning techniques:
what works for you generally works for others (to better or worse extents)

it's a very common area and should be well-understood by now
(though I suspect that it isn't).

also, respect the material:
it probably is hard enough for students to understand

...and don't push work onto them that you could do:
rather than making 'em all figure something out,
figure it out yourself and tell them
(unless the problem is valuable to figure out,
 in which case, *assign it explicitly as homework*)


By "easy" I do not mean "dumb down the material".
Teach exactly the same material, but think it through and think how to teach it.

- tell em what you'll teach, teach it, then review what you've learned
  (do this both in each lecture,
   and over the course of the class)

- indicate the key ideas
- give an overall structure
- give mneumonics
- give shortcuts

\section{Make learning easy, but ask hard questions}


* you do need to think to understand and remember
  ...can't spoon-feed

If only ask for regurgitation,
they will just memorize.

Asking for (and especially, \emph{testing for}) understanding is hard.
