We sometimes forget that we’re experts and our students are just learning.

People have a tendency to see and respond to a situation from their own perspective (myside bias). This can affect the way we teach. We plan and deliver classes with our advanced conceptualizations, often forgetting that our thinking is well beyond that of our students.

Teaching courses more than a few times can also lead us to “improve” them. We get tired of doing things the same way (feature fatigue), so to keep our own interest up, we add a bit more content, make things more challenging, or introduce new tools and techniques (feature creep). We forget that the core concepts are new and often difficult for our students to learn.

Change is good, as long as it improves and enhances student learning … as the experts, we have to make sure that myside bias, feature fatigue and feature creep aren’t finding their way into our classrooms!