Professor Barbara Oakley is the co-creator of the world’s most popular online course: Learning How To Learn: Powerful mental tools to help you master tough subjects, which has helped over 2 million people to improve the way they learn new things.
In this event she will be discussing the science behind how we learn, and how we can apply this research in the classroom.
You can find out more about Barbara’s fascinating life on her website, and also read this great article she's written about maths education for girls.
About the speaker
Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., is an engineering professor at Oakland University in Michigan. She is the author of The New York Times best-selling book A Mind for Numbers, and a co-instructor of the massive open online course, Learning How to Learn, through the University of California–San Diego.
Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal—she has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education.
Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers.
Public lecture Barbara Oakley
You can watch Professor Barbara Oakley’s presentation to the New Zealand Initiative event held at the University of Auckland on 1 May here:
Click here to download the presentation.
Barbara Oakley's interviews in New Zealand
Ahead of her visit, Professor Oakley spoke on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon programme on Monday, 8 April. She discussed that when children and teenagers understand how they learn, "we can blow open their sense of possibility". Listen to the interview here.
Before our event on 1 May, Barbara spoke to Duncan Garner on The AM Show about the science of learning. You can watch the interview here: