Three things from my teaching at Radboud University (2016–2023) show how I approach it.
Rebuilding a lecture around how the field asks questions
I lectured the language component of Brain & Cognition III, a large bachelor course (around 340 students) whose other parts were taught by full professors. What I inherited was a walkthrough of a textbook chapter in the book's order, with learning aims about recalling facts. I rebuilt it around one question: how does cognitive neuroscience study language? Students built up a grid of what, how, when, where and why against behavioural, EEG/MEG, fMRI/PET and lesion methods, and every piece of evidence after that was tagged with its place in the grid. I rewrote the learning aims as outcomes, adding one the original never attempted: judging which method can answer which question, and what a study means for theory and for patients. The material consisted two lectures, opened with why it mattered to students heading into research, clinical work or AI rather than with which sections were examinable, and ran live polls and in-lecture questions throughout. [Redrawn methods grid, your own diagram.]
I rebuilt the exam to match. Within the course's standard format, I tied every question to a specific learning aim, so it was visible which aims were over- or under-tested. I added questions that ask students to reason from data rather than recall facts, and wrote a scoring guide with model answers and partial credit so a student assistant could mark consistently.
Starting from what students already do
In Mental Load & Stress, the content was set; what I changed was how students met it. Instead of stating the theory and then illustrating it, I asked students to list [what they do in a day] and built the framework of mental load from their own lists. They tried the Stroop task and [Kahneman's walking example] themselves before seeing the theory behind them, and one table recurred across both lectures as the anchor. I asked for feedback on the first slide and the last, a habit I carried into the Brain & Cognition lectures the following year.
What a student said
After the language lectures in Brain & Cognition, a student who had written off language processing wrote to me unprompted:
“…I wanted to give you some feedback. I have to admit first that I am not the biggest fan of language and language processing. However I enjoyed your two lectures very much. I really liked the way you presented and you explained the mechanisms of language in our brain very well and understandable. As I said I was not looking forward to this topic but because you yourself were so enthusiastic about it you kind of "infected" me and i liked it a lot.
So that was all I wanted to say. Thank you very much!"
— a third-year student, 2018