I want to take a step back now. Scientists and instructors desperately need to take a moment, pause, and listen to each other. We started this blog by highlighting this problem, but let’s take a look at how far we’ve come. Here’s a mini-synthesis of the top 10 detailed recommendations that have been made to instructors on this blog alone, in just the past 2 months (and don't worry - my QUICK tips are coming up soon!):

1) Stop trying to cater to specific students based on their perceived learning style.

2) Don’t rely on your intuition when making decisions about your teaching practice.

3) Encourage students to test themselves when studying.

4) Provide students with practice questions because writing their own questions takes extra time without extra benefits.

5) Test students frequently in a low-stakes situation

6) Use any type of quizzing you can, including multiple-choice, but make sure that you give feedback.

7) But make sure those multiple-choice questions are really good!

8) Interleave material by reviewing, or better yet by testing students on previous material.

9) Assign high-quality homework assignments.

10) And make sure you’re reading highly objective sources about this stuff, because people will misinterpret the research!

These recommendations are all great. But are you overwhelmed yet? I know I am – and this is my area of expertise! I hear you, Overwhelmed Educator. So, here are a few quick strategies, which I feel confident in recommending to you based on a synthesis of the research. I am taking into account limitations of the research, and only including those recommendations that should actually help, and are easy and efficient to implement.