Building Expertise: Cognitive Methods for Training and Performance Improvement

Purchased as a gift to one of my ROTC Cadets to begin their professional library. As part of a class assignment I asked each cadet what book would they no-kidding read, military or not, related to their academic major or not. After I compiled the list of books for the class I went online and ordered all the books from Amazon. I placed them at their seats prior to class and allowed them to enter the room w/o me being present for the first five minutes. It was, and still is, one of the good teaching moments of our time together. Thanks for helping me fulfill a need in their soon-to-be military career.

Dr. Clark takes an interesting stance - if you want to develop training programs know the science that supports your approach. If you're interested in developing training programs and want to understand the science, much of which is fairly recently developed, that supports one approach over another then this is the book. It starts by reviewing the foundations of building expertise. It then reviews the literature for learning events that are proven to build expertise. It then moves to the highest levels of integration and application of the various techniques into a structured learning environment. While it is surprising to realize our most important national activity - education - has had insufficient input due to the gap between science and application - Dr Clark is driving to reduce that gap.

I just started reading this textbook and it is surprising conversational! It's very thick and I do think that some of the content could be condensed, but that is always the case with textbooks. The author did a wonderful job with the structuring of the book and chapters.

Me gustò mucho el vocabulario utilizado por la autora. Lo utilicé para uno de mis cursos doctorales.

I bought this for my instructional design master's progra and I still refer to it all the time. Excellent advice and very well-written.

This is a must read for anyone with training responsibilities. Great summaries of current research and recommendations you can use immediately.

If you are interested in how to use cognitive methods for improving training and building expertise, then this is the book. Ruth C. Clark uses many scenarios to illustrate her concepts. Not an easy read, but worth it.

I'm an instructional designer and a faithful subscriber to Dr. Ruth Clark. This is another excellent work by her.