This module is based primarily on the excellent book by Susan Ambrose and colleagues, How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching (2010), Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

The seven principles are:

• Students’ prior knowledge can help or hinder learning
• How students organise knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know
• Students’ motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn
• To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practise integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned
• Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning
• Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning
• To become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning