During the last eighteen months that the CT+LE has been operating, we have had the joyous occasion to engage in many stimulating conversations about teaching and learning. When the conversation turns to the use of teaching methods that promote active learning, we receive a variety of opinions. Very frequently we hear the oft repeated excuse that there is no way we can use those methods in our (insert discipline) class because we are required to teach large amounts of information. The use of team-based, problem-based, or collaborative methods (to name a very small few) is bemoaned because it takes longer to get students organized in class. We also hear that the faculty feel a lot of pressure to get through a very specific amount of topics before the end of the semester. What is lost in all of this talk is the idea of learning. At the end of the semester, we might be quiet proud that we were able to get through all of the material, but what did our students really learn? If we presented the material to them, does that presuppose that they learned it? Of course we know from experience that this is not true. In fact, research proves that this type of teaching is not effective for the long term and usually promotes memorization for recall on tests rather than deep learning. If we are helping students to be critical thinkers, then the focus needs to be on what they are learning not how much. Now we know that this breadth versus depth argument is complex. But let's take a step back and think about it for a moment. When you are creating your course and you write down the outcomes, what you are truly expecting your students to be able to do when they finish your class, aren't you expecting them to learn? So what is really important is that they fully grasp the concepts that you are teaching and be able to apply them to different situations. In most instances, you are beginning the class with the most basic and usually the most important concepts. Once you have them understanding those concepts, you are scaffolding newer more difficult material on top of that. The entire concept is based on establishing an anchor of information that they can then attach new material to. The long term memory is what is really important. Especially if these students are your majors but even if they are not. Isn't it important for them to know the concepts of your discipline for their general everyday lives? If not, why are we teaching them things that really don't matter? Further, don't we want to move them up the hierarchy of Bloom's Taxonomy? Moving your students from remembering information to application and then to synthesis and judgement is the ultimate goal of teaching. Mary E. Berg, who edits The Teaching Professor writes, "During [a recent faculty development] discussion, many of my colleagues commented that using engaged learning techniques in the classroom took too much time. They weren’t able to teach all the material and ended the term with way more content than they could possibly cover. I’ve sat in enough lecture halls to know that neither I, nor my fellow students, have necessarily learned all that professors attempt to “cover” in a course. Yes, the professors lectured. Yes, I took notes, read the textbooks, memorized the materials, and took the tests. But at the end of the term, at the end of my degree, and 10 to 20 years later, what courses and what materials do I remember?" It is something to think about. We will be providing some foundational research articles over the next posts that will be interesting to anyone who is struggling with this dilemma.