Before the teaching semester begins, educators play an important role in establishing conditions for effective learning that will occur the course of the unit. Leveraging Mind Brain and Education (Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2021) principles of emotion and cognition can help to establish these conditions. Emotions are strongly connected to learning (Cavanagh, 2016), as emotional stimuli activate circuits in the brain that in turn affect how well we learn. Our brains prioritise memories or information as more important when they are “tagged” with emotions as meaningful, and we will then want to learn more about this information (Playsted & Kelly, 2021). Visual ‘tags’ can help students to ‘see’ something as important and provide an opportunity for them to make positive emotional connections to the unit’s content and teacher, even before they begin the course. In this presentation, I will share how I have worked with visual tools to create an initial ‘welcome video’ that includes visually and aurally engaging components. Anecdotal feedback from colleagues and students suggest it is worthwhile investing time in creating these welcome videos. My hope is that ‘seeing’ this welcome might foster students’ positive, emotional engagement with the content they will be learning.
Welcome Video
Other presentations from this symposium
Join us for the 2023 Teaching Symposium on July 27th!
Preview this years program in the below: