What Five Years of Listening to Students Taught Us About Learning. A Conversation with Chris Gallagher, Kristi Girdharry, and Kevin Smith

Dead Ideas in Teaching and Learning · Sep 17, 2026 · 38m

For five years, Chris Gallagher, Kristi Girdharry, and Kevin Smith sat down each semester with the same set of twenty Northeastern University students. What began as an analysis of these students’ writing skills evolved into a book on how students often understand the learning process more clearly than faculty recognize.

Gallagher, Girdharry, and Smith's new book, Getting Learning Right: The Promise of Higher Education, takes aim at some of the myths that circulate in public discourse about college - that students enroll simply for the credential or that everything can be learned online, for…