Week 1: Igniting Outstanding Teaching

Introduction

Welcome to Igniting Outstanding Teaching, a four-part professional development series created by the Office for Faculty Excellence at NC State University.  This is the 2026 offering of the award-winning SPARK initiative (Summer Programs: Aspire, Renew, Kindle). In Igniting Outstanding Teaching we are diving deep into the art, science, and passion of pedagogy. Each week, a distinguished member of the NC State Academy of Outstanding Teachers will sit down to interview world-renowned educators from a variety of disciplines.

Together, they will explore what it takes to elevate the educational experience. You can look forward to rich conversations about innovative teaching techniques and how to inspire and engage students.

On Week 1 we will feature a conversation with Dr. Stephen Chew,  who has been a professor of psychology at Samford University since 1993. Trained as a cognitive psychologist, he is a nationally recognized expert on the cognitive basis of effective teaching and student learning. He conducts original research on topics such as using examples in teaching, the impact of cognitive load on learning, the importance of student curiosity and trust in the teacher, and the tenacious misconceptions that students bring into the classroom. He also works to translate cognitive research into accessible knowledge for teachers and students. He is the creator of a groundbreaking series of YouTube videos for students on studying effectively based on cognitive research. The videos have received millions of views and are used worldwide at educational institutions, from high schools to professional schools.

Dr. Chew is the recipient of multiple national awards for his teaching and research.  In 2005, he received the Robert S. Daniel Teaching Excellence Award from the Society for the Teaching of Psychology as the outstanding teacher of psychology at four-year colleges and universities. He was named the 2011 Outstanding Master’s Universities and Colleges U.S. Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In 2022, he received the Award for Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology from the American Psychological Association. He regularly serves as a keynote speaker and workshop leader at conferences on teaching in general and on the teaching of psychology in particular.

He was interviewed for this program on May 28, 2026 by Dr. Melissa Srougi, who is an associate teaching professor in the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, and a member of the NC State Academy of Outstanding Teachers since 2026.

The podcast music, Peachtree by Jopsy Bayog, is part of the NC State Libraries State of Sound Collection.

Additional Resources

• How to Get the Most Out of Studying Video Series
• Teaching Resources: How to Get the Most Out of Studying
• Book: Teaching psychology : A Step-by-Step Guide by Douglas A. Bernstein, Sue Frantz, Stephen L. Chew
  • NC State Library users can access the book here.

Interview Transcipt

Melissa Srougi: Welcome, Steven. We wanted to speak with you this week because we believe that you are truly an outstanding educator. To start us off, could you tell us a little bit about yourself? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? 

Stephen Chew: Well, I was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. I went to the University of Texas as an undergraduate, and I’m a professor. I’ve spent my career in psychology, and I started as a chemical engineering major because my father is a chemical engineer and both my brothers are engineers. And so I thought it was a genetic thing, that I was supposed to be an engineer, and it just didn’t really excite me that much.

And my dad suggested that I try general psychology. I didn’t know anything about psychology. I didn’t know what it was. But I took it in a class of 500, ’cause it was at the University of Texas, and it just really excited me. Two things excited me. First of all, I just thought the professor had the coolest job in the world, ’cause just, you know, it just excited me.

Now, looking back, I was probably one of the, you know, I don’t know how many people were really excited by that. But first off, I thought, like, I wanna be a professor. And then second, I thought, well, the psychology thing is pretty, is pretty cool, so I’m gonna try that. So I switched over to psychology. And then, from there I graduate.

I didn’t know as much as I wanted to know about psychology, so I went to the University of Minnesota for graduate school. And, so I say I went from 108 degrees in the summer to 37 below zero in the winter, and had a wonderful experience there, both in terms of training me for research, but also I had some wonderful mentors, who were outstanding teachers.

And then, I knew that I really wanted more of a teaching-focused career. And from there, I went to a small college called Gustavus Adolphus College, which is a small liberal arts school. And then, I was looking around for a change, and Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where I am now, had a need for a department chair.

And their program was just in disarray and  years of neglect. And they just said, “You know, you can come in and you can design the program that you want.” And that was just an, a really fascinating challenge to me. And so I did that. And I was a department chair for the next 25 years, essentially.

I don’t recommend that career path for, for other people. But it was just the way it worked out for me. And, and so that’s kind of how I ended up in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Melissa Srougi:Wow, that’s an incredible journey. Thanks for sharing that with us. As you know, our theme this year is igniting outstanding teaching. And so what do you think it takes to be an outstanding teacher? 

Stephen Chew: It’s, you know, I have continued development throughout my whole career. It’s an incredibly complex skill. I think that’s the first thing that people have to understand is that you’re always learning and adapting constantly. So I literally think I’m a better teacher now than I was, like, 10 years ago, and I’ve done this for, like 40 years, because you’re always learning new perspectives, and the students are, of course, changing and things like that.

And that became really clear during the, the lockdown years in COVID- Yes … where we all had to adapt and, we all had to kind of make adjustments You know, there are a lot of different approaches there. And then, and now we’re still dealing with that, and we’re having to continue to adapt because, the students we’re getting you know, you can almost track, you know, at what point they were in their high school or junior high school careers when they had that disruption, you know? And all of a sudden they’re just missing certain kinds of things, so you have to compensate for that. So we’re still in the aftermath of that, and we will be for a number of years to come, I think.

Getting at your original question, first I’ll say that I had very little preparation for teaching in graduate school. I had three one-hour meetings, about, like, how to teach, and it was like tips, like, you know, “Don’t jangle your change in your pocket,” and, “This is how you write a syllabus.”

And then they let me loose on  some incredibly unfortunate undergraduates. So that’s where I started, and I think that’s where a lot of graduate students start. Luckily now  there’s much better preparation, but still, even a semester or two semesters of preparation does not really prepare you for the complexity and challenge in teaching.

And the way I look at it is like, excellent teaching takes at least three kinds of knowledge. The knowledge of your field, disciplinary knowledge, which we almost all have because, you know, we’ve spent our lives studying a discipline. And so that part we have, and a lot of people believe that that’s all you need, that if you’re an expert you must be a good teacher, but that’s not true.

There’s at least two other forms of knowledge. This was outlined by one of my mentors in teaching, Lee Shulman, who was director of the Carnegie Foundation. So there’s, what’s called pedagogical content knowledge, which is, your knowledge of how students learn your field. And this is what you gain with experience, where you realize what students have trouble with, what misconceptions occur, what, confusions occur, and you anticipate them.

So when you start, you’re just trying to get your slides done and try not to look foolish in front of your students. But as you teach a course more and more, you realize students have trouble with this or this is a common misconception that students have, and you learn to anticipate and try to address those.

And so that’s pedagogical content knowledge. And then you have the knowledge of how people learn. And that’s where I’ve got an advantage as a cognitive psychologist. That’s something I study. So things like, paying attention, what’s the nature of attention, working memory, what are the limits of working memory? How do you get information through the constraints of working memory? And, you know, how do you create meaningful schema? How do you get students to retrieve and apply information correctly? You know, the pedagogical content knowledge you develop through experience, through teaching.

And then, oftentimes there’s not an opportunity to learn about how a student’s actually learning or the constraints on learning in the human mind. And that’s what I’ve been trying to help faculty with, trying to educate them about the strengths and weaknesses of human cognitive architecture, so that way they know how to design their pedagogy to get the most learning out of whatever pedagogy they choose.

So that’s a long answer, but I hope that addresses your question. It takes development of multiple kinds of knowledge, and it takes your whole career…you develop through your whole career. 

Melissa Srougi: Absolutely. I mean, you’re constantly learning and evolving just like your students are in the classroom. It’s dynamic. Thank you for that. My next question is, how do you try to inspire your students? 

Stephen Chew: The assumption I think a lot of faculty have is that students come in with a certain level of motivation. So you have, like, highly motivated students and, and, uh, low motivated students. And to me, the reality is, you can create motivation in your students. Like when I was a student, there were some classes I got excited about and I was happy to work hard for, and others, you know, were kind of more like pulling teeth. I’ve gotta do this cause it’s good for me.

So you create this atmosphere where, first of all, you set goals and you tell the students the value of those goals. Like, this is what you’re going to get out of it. This is not the like, “I’ve assigned this five-page paper.” It’s like, “This is a paper that’s really gonna help you dig deep into this very complex issue, and I think it’ll really benefit you.”

So you provide that value for them and, then, you give them agency. You allow them to kind of make choices and decisions on their own. You give them feedback, that really creates that sense that if I do this work, it will really benefit me. And it doesn’t have to be an immediate benefit.

I mean, students will resonate towards things like, ‘this will help you in your career.’ ‘You’re gonna have to be learning your entire career.’ So it’s not just you’re learning how to study, you’re learning how to be successful.

So you show them the value, you show them how they can be in charge of their own learning. And that kind of raises that motivation. And I’ve always said, students don’t mind working hard if they see the value of what they’re doing. So I try to make that crystal clear.

And sometimes I teach statistics, and that can be a challenge, but it’s really gratifying when the students go, you know, this is a… I had a student who said, like, “This is the first math class I’ve ever had a sense of mastery over what I was doing.” You know? And, that’s so powerful.

And students will actually say “Statistics was one of my favorite classes,” because, they, they just actually got this sense that they could do it. They knew how to do these certain things, and success breeds motivation, motivation breeds success.

And so you just create that atmosphere where students can see that if they do the work, they’re going to be successful, they’re gonna learn interesting things, and that kind of, I hope, inspires them. And it seems like it does based on the comments and feedback that you get from your students.

Melissa Srougi: That’s wonderful. 

Stephen Chew: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really gratifying. I mean, that’s the most gratifying part of teaching, right? That when your students really resonate and they succeed, and then especially you get those emails every now and then like, “I saw this on the TV program and it reminded me of you”, that’s so cool.

Melissa Srougi: Do you share with your students comments from previous students, to help add to that transparency and inspire them and motivate them? Like, “Don’t just listen to me, but listen to people who have already taken this class.”

Stephen Chew: Yeah, it’s a really good strategy to use. When I first started doing this, I did a supervised research course, we call it directed research. And so I would tell my students, “Work hard at the beginning because you’ll be so jammed up at the end,” and things like that.

And then I realized it really would be more valuable coming from other students. So I asked the students to write letters to future students, and they were saying exactly the same thing. “Don’t, don’t procrastinate on this class,” you know? And, so I’ve done that several times, and I’ve even done it within general psychology where you have first-year students and those students often don’t know how to study.

They’re, you know, they come in and it’s valuable. I’ll ask some students who are really doing well, I’ll ask them to lay out like when do you start studying? How often do you go to class? How extensively do you take notes? So I will, I’ll ask them, if they’re willing, then I’ll publish those anonymously, and that way, the students who are struggling can see exactly what it takes.

Because a lot of times, and there’s actually research on this, students will have this mental model of how much other students are studying. And so they’ll think like, “Well, you know, I’ve studied as much as probably most other students have,” and they, you know, they may be hours short of what s- A students are doing, and they just think, “Oh, well, they’re lucky,” you know, or they already knew the material.

But if a student comes out and says, ” I read everything like five days before the exam, and then I test myself, and I’m doing this,” and, you know, that’s like, like, wow, I didn’t know other students were doing that kind of thing. So there’s value in that also of, of just asking what your best students are doing. And then, sharing that with the rest of the class to say, “It’s not me. I’m not being tricky.” You know? ‘As a teacher, you know, I’m not, I’m not showing favoritism. You know, this is what it takes to do well in the class. This is what your peers are saying.’ 

Melissa Srougi: The next question is, if you could go back and give your younger self advice about teaching and working in higher education, what words of wisdom would you share?

Stephen Chew: No, that’s a great question. 

Melissa Srougi: That’s a loaded question. 

Stephen Chew: It is. It’s really tough. So here’s the thing, is that  sometimes you can do everything right and it still doesn’t work out. Like, every class has its own character. They gel. You know, some classes are talkative, some just sit there like stone, but they may still be interested.

So every class is unique. It has its own character. You have to do your best to shape that class, get them talking early, establish those norms. So, make the norm of being curious and the norm of asking questions and the norm of like, in this class, we pay attention because there’s really valuable information.

So you need to try and shape each class, but, sometimes, you know, and I was just talking to a colleague about this the other day. It’s like you can do everything right, and if that class just gels in a really unfortunate way, no matter how experienced you are, that class is not gonna work out as well as you might like.

Basically,  if it comes down to you versus the class, you’re kind of sunk. There’s not much you can do to retrieve that. What you want to do is, like, you want the class to see you as their partner, their collaborator in learning. Like we’re all, you know, pushing towards helping you be successful.

But if the class starts seeing you as an impediment, that’s really problematic. So telling my younger self, you’re always gonna have to adapt to a class, and you, you’re going to try and just from the very beginning, even before the semester starts, take steps to kind of shape that class.

You know, send them a message. Like, “I’m excited to teach you. I’m looking forward to this. I really enjoy teaching. You know, basically I want to be there, uh, and we’re going to learn a lot of interesting stuff.” Just set that tone as early as you can. So that’s the first part. The second part is sometimes you can do everything right, and the class will still not go as well as you had hoped.

Melissa Srougi: So Steven, early on as you were introducing your professional pathway and your background, you mentioned a number of mentors, in your journey. So can you think of an educator or educators that inspired you? And how did they influence you and your teaching practices today?

Stephen Chew: I’ve been very fortunate. And I think, if you talk to any academic, they can probably point to at least one teacher that really inspired them. And, and I’ll be honest with you, my son went through high school and, in his senior year, he finally found a teacher that really kind of inspired him.

And it wasn’t until that point that I realized that a lot of students don’t ever actually experience a mentor, an intellectual mentor like that. But I think the reason a lot of teachers go into academia is because there’s a teacher that particularly inspired them. I’ve been fortunate at every stage of my career. I’ve just been incredibly fortunate to have mentors. I can think of some back from junior high, but,the mentor from high school that I particularly value is my high school English teacher. I had my AP English teacher. There were 12 of us in English AP, and we all still keep up.

And just to show you how old I am, I just went to my 50-year high school reunion. And I took my English teacher. We’ve all kept up with her over the years, and she’s still in good health. And so the 50-year high school reunion came up, so I said, “Do you wanna go to the 50-year?”

And so I took my English teacher there. So that just shows the impact that she had on us. But when I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I had several mentors whom I kept up with over the years. And then graduate school, both of my mentors there were very powerful researchers, but they also cared a great deal about student learning.

And luckily for me, they were very supportive of the fact that I wanted to pursue more of a teaching-oriented career, and they were really good with that.

So Melissa, I don’t want this to be a one-way conversation. I mean, what about, what about you? What mentors did you have that influenced you? 

Melissa Srougi: I think very similar to you, I’ve been very fortunate that at every step of my career, I’ve had really a role model I can go to that demonstrates what good teaching is and different aspects of good teaching.

I still remember my grade school science teacher. And, you know, project-based learning, before I knew what project-based learning was, we were doing that, and how engaging it was. To things like my mom is a retired English as a second language teacher, and many times I would be a conversation partner in her classes, and that really taught me, again, before I even knew what teaching was, making a comfortable environment for students, giving them an environment where they’re not afraid to fail and to take risks and put themselves out there. To, you know, graduate advisors that were really encouraging that I was interested in teaching and giving me the agency and flexibility to pursue those opportunities. and then here now, as, you know, I kind of switched gears a little bit. I was trained as a bench scientist in cancer biology, but became very interested in STEM education research, so mentors who helped me transition to a whole new field of study that was not familiar to me.

So every step of the way, it really does take a village, and that village becomes your family, and that helps us grow. And then we have our students who become part of that village as well, and we help them grow, and it’s really such a wonderful community to be a part of.

Stephen Chew: Absolutely. Several things you say there I just absolutely resonate to. So first of all, my mother was an elementary school math teacher for 30 years, so I strongly identify with learning the value of teaching from her. And also, a lot of the concepts we talk about now in the science of learning, you know, they’re not new things.

They’re just what you talked about, being safe to fail and that atmosphere where you feel like you can take chances because you’ll be supported. So now we talk about psychological safety and belongingness and things like that, but, you know, we’ve known about those. It’s just that we haven’t had a specific term which allows us to identify and study it, to see the value of it, or student trust in the teacher, which I study. And then, you know, the last thing you mentioned, I’ve got a number of students who are now professors. They’ve gotten their doctorates and things like that. So I learn from them, you know? It’s just, it does come full circle where they are trying new and different things, and I go, “Wow, that looks pretty cool. I never thought about doing that before.”  I always say teachers are the most generous people in the world.

It’s just such an incredible community to be a part of. 

Melissa Srougi: Yeah, absolutely. And as you mentioned, part of being an outstanding teacher is not just knowing the content knowledge, but understanding how students learn and the psychology surrounding that, and the environment you create for them is really important. And many times when we’re first dipping our toe in the education waters, that’s not what we’re trained on, depending on what discipline you’re in. And so the importance of really, as an educator in your own professional development, understanding the psychological components for how students learn and how that changes and the-  perspectives and creating that environment for students, how important that can be. And that really gets into one of your lines of research which focuses on student metacognition, and the importance of that, and a whole slew of educational resources that you’ve created and that have been used worldwide across institutions, high schools, professional schools, and others.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you got that project started? What inspired you to focus on that line of inquiry, and how did it just explode from there? 

Stephen Chew: Metacognition is one of those terms I’ve talked about, like where people knew what it was, but they didn’t really have a term for it. So there’s actually papers you can see prior to the 1990s, so it’s called student awareness of their own learning. And so in psychology in the 1970s, there was this concept called metacognition. It’s actually your awareness of your own thought processes. So you can monitor your level of thinking and how close you are to a solution, and what your level of knowledge is and what you know and don’t know.

So this kind of came out in psychology, and it turns out it’s very important educationally. So, students who are excellent students have excellent metacognitive awareness. So they know when they’ve studied enough, and they know when they can stop. Weaker students, it turns out, have poor metacognitive awareness. They’re overconfident. They wait too late to start studying, and they stop studying because they think that they understand everything, but there’s these big gaps in their knowledge that they’re not aware of. So, you know, I realize, and, and I’m not the only one who realized the importance of metacognition in education, and this is just something important for students to understand.

So I’ve always been very interested in applying cognitive psychology to helping students learn more effectively. And so back in 2006, I was asked to give a talk to the entering freshman class, on how to learn effectively, or how to study effectively.

And I knew I wanted to tell them about metacognition, and back in those days, I was just like, “Do I really want to introduce this big, scary-looking term to them?” But I thought, “Okay, well, there’s just no getting around it.” I mean, unless I just kind of… I can’t come up with a simpler term, so I talk about metacognition as applied to education. It’s like your awareness of your level of competence, your level of mastery of material. So I gave that presentation. It went over really well. I had a lot of faculty there, and they really appreciated just someone coming in and giving their students guidance about how to study more effectively, ’cause the teachers didn’t have that background either.

The teachers found it useful also. A lot of it was new to them. I’ve given that talk every year since 2006 to the entering freshman class. What I realized though after a few years was that I would give this 45-minute talk. Students would go, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna do that.”

But then in the heat of, like, finals, they slip back into their old habits. So you can’t just change their behavior with one 45-minute talk. And so, I thought, “What I need to do is I need to create a video on this to explain this.” So I thought, “I’ll just record the lecture, the 45-minute lecture I give.”

I pitched it to my university as like, “You can make this video which will explain how to study.” They were thinking, “Are you gonna, like, be motivational?” I was like, “No, I’m going to explain cognitive psychology to them.” And they thought, “Oh yeah, great. Okay. So maybe 50 people in the world will see this.” So they assigned a videographer, who actually was a former student of mine, and I still work with him today. But he told me, he just said, “No one’s going to watch a 45-minute video.” And this is 2011, so this is like the early days of YouTube. So I broke it down into a series of brief, five-minute videos. There’s five of them in the original series. And we recorded them one morning. The university was so skeptical that anyone would ever watch these things that they made me record…We, we did it early in the morning, so the sun was the right angle, and, they made me record the beginning of each one in front of a different, part of campus, so it would double as a campus tour as well as like- … you know, these videos on how to study. So I was just thinking, you know, “I’ll be so happy if 1,000 people ever see these.”

They got released and, uh, you know, went to 1,000, and then all of a sudden a lot of universities started using them in their orientations, and faculty used them, and they became very popular in high school AP classes. So now they’ve been seen and they’ve been– I, I’ve, you know, millions and millions of times, I’ve– I can’t track it because people have, you know, taken them and used them and things like that. But I knew at the time there was nothing out there sort of comparable to that. So that’s been very gratifying . But it just shows the need that students, coming from high school, which is a very different learning context than college, there’s a real thirst for that kind of knowledge. So I accidentally stumbled into being one of the first to offer that kind of thing. And that hasn’t changed. Even now, there’s still this great demand for resources and helping and facilitating metacognition in our students. 

Melissa Srougi: And you had mentioned that, students will start to adapt new metacognitive strategies, and that works well until, crunch time and they’re in exams and they’re stressed, and they tend to go back to their default metacognitive, state prior, which we know doesn’t serve them well. So if we as a faculty want to instill global metacognition skills for our students, what do you think is the most effective way for diverse faculty to collectively reinforce these habits? ‘Cause we know just a one shot in one class isn’t gonna do it, right? It requires iteration. It requires hearing it from different perspectives. So how do we keep that universal language of how we learn consistent from some first semester, first year student who’s in an English writing class to a senior who’s in physics or a professional student that’s in their first year of vet school?

Stephen Chew: Yeah, that’s a great question. And it takes a comprehensive, integrated solution. You can start by, especially if you’re dealing with first year students, to give them … I mean, there’s actually research which shows that instructing people on how to learn is very helpful to them.

So you can use the videos I have. There’s many other resources now, about instructing them and at least knowing what they are supposed to do, and debunking the myths that are out there about learning styles and things like that. So you start from the beginning, and then within your class, you should always have formative assessments, like short quizzes or think pair shares or things like that so that the students can gauge their level of understanding.

And you need to explicitly tell them the feedback because students will think, “Oh, well, you know, I didn’t get that right, but I’ll figure it out by the exam.” This is one of the things I discovered. You can give a practice exam, and students will fail the practice exam and still be surprised when they fail the actual exam. You literally have to tell them, “I give you this question or this problem to solve, and if this takes you 20 minutes to do, you’re never gonna do this well on the exam where you’ve got to do eight of these things in an hour.”

So you’ve got to tell them, like, “Use the feedback from this to examine what you need to prepare for, what you need to study for.” And so you give them that feedback as you go. And then after the exam, you can give them what’s called an exam wrapper or an exam debrief to make them think about how did I prepare for this? How successful was I? So you kind of keep this constant feedback about like what were your learning strategies? How successful were they? Do you need to change? You’re really doing your students a favor by doing that, that kind of thing. And providing them resources, like the study videos that I have.

Instead of having… if a student comes to you and says, “I failed the exam,” and you ask them, “Well, you know, how did, how did you prepare?” They’re always gonna say, “Well, I, you know, I studied really hard for it,” or something like that. But something that’s more structured like an exam debriefing document asks “Did you finish all the reading before?” Or, “Did you read thoroughly or did you read the summaries and only…” And that gives you a framework to kind of talk about, well, you know, you really need to come to class. You really need to read the material closely. You need to pay attention to these formative assessments and it will shape their performance.

Students are looking for that. They’re looking for that switch, you know? They’re looking for that silver bullet. Like if I do this, then I’m going to do a lot better. And you have to convince them. It takes a while to shape their behavior, you know? They’re not going to learn it immediately, and every class is different. So they’re gonna study differently for my classes than for someone in biology or someone in history and the students are having to learn all that. That’s part of the challenge of the first year. So you just need to give them multiple opportunities, to do well and give them constant feedback, teach them how to use that feedback.

And then the last thing I do is I try to structure big assignments for them. So I give them goalposts to hit. When the first exam is coming up, this is like in the fall of the year when I’ve got a lot of incoming freshmen  a week before the exam, I will say, “If you expect to do well on this exam, you should complete all of the reading by today.”

“Because you learn more in review than you learn the first time reading material.” And look at me like I am just nuts, you know? And then hopefully it makes more sense as they go along that, yeah, I warn them that you need to get all the reading done several days in advance. Then I have a research paper for my general psych class, which is very first-year student heavy, and a week before the paper is due I have them post an update, which everyone…It’s a discussion board, it’s open. Everyone can see it, and I said, “I don’t care what you say. If you can just say, ‘I haven’t started on this,’ that’s fine.” . I just want them to think about this paper a week before it’s due.

And they can see what everyone else has said, and of course, there’s always those two or three students in there like, “Oh, I finished that, like, a week ago.” This is kinda getting back to, I talked about, like, they assume that no one has started on it yet. Yeah. And then they realize, “Oh, you know, several people are, like, they’re way ahead of me.” And students care a lot more about what the other students think than they care about what we think. So that’s using that kind of social influence, but it’s also structuring it. Like, don’t think you can wait till two days before the exam or before the paper is due before you can start.

So there’s just a variety of different things that you can do, you know, instructing them, giving them opportunities to test themselves in class, and structuring activities that make them think about things before they think is important but really is important, I think.

So those are just some of the things that I do. I didn’t start out doing all those. This is that process throughout, like, “I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna do this.” And, you know, and that’s where I finally  ended up. So it’s just like a syllabus. You know, at first start, the syllabus is two pages long-and as you get, you know, as the farther you get, like, you anticipate all these problems until you’re, you know, my, I think my syllabus was one sheet when I was first year, and it is, like, six or eight pages most recently. 

Melissa Srougi: So I just wanna have one more question about metacognition, and, and going back to the practices of good teaching and what an outstanding teacher does. And so if you were to sit in on a class, um, for an outstanding teacher, what kind of student behaviors would you look for as evidence that this metacognitive culture is really being formed, and students are starting to, of their own accord, develop these skills that they need to be successful?

Stephen Chew: That’s a great question. Like, how can you really tell? And this relates to research that I’ve been doing most recently, and that is if the students, sort of, deeply trust that professor, so they see the professor as being a champion for their own learning. And they will work harder for that professor. They will see the assignments as opportunities to learn and not meaningless hoops you’re supposed to jump through in order to get a grade. So trust is one of those things that’s been understudied. We know it’s incredibly important in organizations, but for some reason it’s not been studied much in teaching, that the students believe that you’re competent, if they believe that you are acting with integrity, that you have fair policies, that you see all the students as being successful learners, or having the potential to succeed.

And if they see you as acting in the student’s best interest, if they see the teacher is prioritizing student learning over their own convenience, over, you know, just getting things done, those students will pay attention better in class. They’ll take more risks. They’ll try to accomplish more. Like in a paper, sometimes you see students do something that’s very safe and, and solid versus students who are just really going out on a limb, like really going for something. You see this in research, you know, how ambitious the student research can be.

That trust is really critical, and I think outstanding teachers know how to build that student trust in them, and I think that’s incredibly important. 

Melissa Srougi: Absolutely. Very powerful, but something that you have to develop and learn and practice over time to develop that. Because, as you said, every class is a different community and they’re gonna respond differently, and you have to be able to evolve with them and, and change with them to meet them where they are. 

Stephen Chew: Yeah. It’s a fine line between a student in the class where the students are just all in for that. They’re not worried about the– Well they’re probably always gonna be worried about their grade. Always. But they’re also just excited about what they can learn. That’s what you really, you really want. But if you betray that trust, if you don’t facilitate that trust, it’s very easy for a class to slip into, what’s the minimum amount I need to do to pass this class and I’ll never think about it again. So you, you just really want to really instill that sense of trust in your students. 

Melissa Srougi: And Steven, as we, round out our discussion today, I thought we could end with some tips for our audience. Like, what resources or other suggestions would you suggest to someone who is new to teaching or, you know, final and parting thoughts for them on this journey?

Stephen Chew: This is a much better time to start to learn how to teach than when I started. There was one book, McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, which is still around, that you could kind of rely on. Now every discipline probably has some journal or some organization on how to teach.

Take advantage of the resources that are there, and then there’s a lot of really good books and resources on teaching and learning now. I guess I’m not so proud that I won’t … I’ll mention my own, that, you know, we do like the videos. I also have some videos for teachers I created. One, Teaching in Pandemic Times. It’s on YouTube. And then I have a whole series – I developed a framework for understanding the cognitive challenges of teaching, so that’s actually not on my YouTube channel. It’s on my colleague, Bill Surman’s, but you can find that. And then I write a monthly essay on teaching for The Teaching Professor. It’s another good resource. All those  essays are on my ResearchGate. They’re freely available. So there’s tons of really good resources. So you, you know, have a lot of opportunities to do that.

And if you have a teaching and learning center on campus, get to know those folks, beause it’s so helpful. 

Melissa Srougi:  They are great. They are great folks. Absolutely. Make them your friends very quickly. Stephen, it really was an honor to have the time to talk with you this afternoon. Thank you so much. I learned a lot during our conversation, and I hope our audience does too. So thank you again. It really was wonderful. 

Stephen Chew:Thanks, Melissa. I really enjoyed talking with you. 

Credits

The SPARK Team 2026

• Maria Gallardo-Williams, Producer/Writer
• Janet Del Pinal, Promotion/Graphic Designer/Announcer 
• Kyle Miskell, Audio Engineer
• Kassidy Wood, Social Media Promotion
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