Beyond the Lecture: Active Learning, Cognitive Illusions, and the Role of AI in Physics Education

Louis Deslauriers,
Physics Department; Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Harvard University

Abstract

Despite overwhelming evidence that students learn more when actively engaged, traditional lecturing still dominates college STEM classrooms. Why do students and faculty continue to accept the traditional lecture as effective instruction? I’ll present findings suggesting that the ease of listening to a polished lecture can mislead both students and instructors into overestimating how much learning is happening. In contrast, the more demanding approach of deliberate practice—structured, effortful, and iterative—is often considered the gold standard of active learning, a kind of active learning on steroids. Rooted in expertise research, it has been shown to produce significantly greater learning gains.

I’ll discuss how cognitive psychology helps explain this disconnect, particularly through the concepts of perceived fluency, feeling of learning, and actual learning. These misperceptions carry real consequences for physics education—for example, student course evaluations often reward lectures that feel good over those that teach well.

I'll also share how we’re bringing AI into the classroom to enhance active learning. In one application, we use real-time AI to answer student questions during class, increasing engagement and interaction. In another, we’re developing a high-performance AI tutor that mimics expert human teachers, offering personalized support at scale. By combining research-based teaching with the latest AI tools, we aim to reshape how students learn physics in both large and small courses.

Timbits, coffee, tea will be served in STI A before the colloquium.