Resources

With the rapid proliferation of distance education and e-learning courses, the need is growing for a comprehensive, professional approach to evaluating their effectiveness. This indispensable book offers a road map to guide evaluation practice in these innovative learning environments. Providing practical, step-by-step guidelines and tools for conducting evaluation studies—including how to deal with stakeholders, develop surveys and interview protocols, collect other scientific evidence, and analyze and blend mixed-methods data—the work also features a template for writing high-quality reports. The "unfolding model" developed by the authors draws on Messick's influential assessment framework and applies it to program evaluation. Two case studies of actual programs (a distance learning course and an e-learning course) demonstrate the unfolding model in action. (From the Publisher)

This is an essential resource for anyone designing or facilitating online learning. It introduces an easy, practical model (read, reflect, display, and do) that will show online educators how to deliver content in ways that benefit all types of learners (visual, auditory, observational, and kinesthetic) from a wide variety of backgrounds and skill levels. With a solid theoretical foundation and concrete guidance and examples, this book can be used as a handy reference, a professional guidebook, or a course text. The authors intend for it to help online instructors and instructional designers as well as those contemplating such positions design, develop, and deliver learner-centered online instruction. (From the Publisher)

This volume aims to give teachers and scholars a greater understanding of the challenges associated with the practice of fostering transformative learning, along with providing a recognition of the complexity of practice beyond the application of strategies and techniques. Teaching for Change will encourage and motivate practitioners to take more risks in the classroom, pushing the limits of what is presently known about transformative education. Fostering transformative learning is about teaching for change. It requires intentional action, a willingness to take personal risk, a genuine concern for the learners' betterment, and the wherewithal to draw on a variety of methods and techniques that help create a classroom environment that encourages and supports personal growth. To become effective at fostering transformative learning, it is helpful to look through the lens of those who have been engaged in the practice. The contributing authors to this volume are seasoned practitioners and scholars who have introduced innovations that enhance the practice of fostering transformative learning and have asked ethical questions that need to be explored and reflected upon when practicing transformative learning in the classroom. This volume provides a tutorial and analysis of teaching for change by showing how these seasoned practitioners and scholars grapple with the fundamental issues associated with the subject. Teaching for Change is the 109th issue of the quarterly higher education report New Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, published by Jossey-Bass. (From the Publisher)

The Art & Craft of College Teaching provides a hands-on, quick-start guide to the college classroom for those who are facing their first five years as independent teachers. In it, you'll find the answers to some of college teachings most common questions How do college students learn most effectively? What are the questions to consider when you develop a course for the first time? How does class size affect course design? How do you set your expectations for your students? How can you help students become better thinkers? Why is the assessment of student learning important to the classroom teacher? What makes lecturing effective? What techniques of preparation and performance work best with which discussions? How do you deal with a slow or non-responsive class? How do you deal with challenges to your authority in the classroom? How do you set up a seminar so that it runs will a minimum of input from you? How do you get students to work collaboratively and effectively on learning exercises? What are the best practices for grading student exams and papers? What do you actually learn from student evaluations? (From the Publisher)

Assessment plays a key role in institutions of higher education. However, many colleges and universities simply add their assessment plans onto other teaching, learning, service, and research activities in order to prepare for an impending accreditation visit. In this important resource, Catherine M. Wehlburg outlines an integrated and ongoing system for assessment that both prepares for an accreditation visit and truly enhances student learning. This innovative approach can be adapted for use in a wide variety of situations to transform a department or an entire institution. (From the Publisher)

No other teaching experience will feel quite like the first time an instructor walks into a classroom to face a class of students. This book is a wise and friendly guide for new faculty and graduate student instructors who are about to teach for the first time. It provides an introduction to the theory of teaching; describes proven strategies and activities for engaging students in their learning; and offers advice on classroom management, syllabus creation, grading, assessment, and discipline issues, among other topics. It prepares readers for a confident start as teachers, and gives them a firm foundation on which to develop their skills and personal classroom styles. The author breaks teaching down into its component elements and tasks to enable graduate student instructors to identify their particular responsibilities, and learn about what works and does not. They will also benefit from reading the book as a whole as it sets their work in the context of course objectives and learning theory. For new faculty this engaging book provides a solid basis from which to develop their skills and personal styles as teachers; and offers guidance on documenting their classroom success for the purposes of promotion and tenure. For graduate student instructors, the book is a companion that will give them confidence and pleasure in teaching, and stand them in good stead if they decide on a in any future career in academe. (From the Publisher)

"College Teaching: Developing Perspective Through Dialogue" casts a wide net over the topic of teaching in college. It begins with the notion that to understand what it means to be a good college teacher, self-awareness is essential. From there it provides helpful guidelines for beginning teachers, as well as to more experienced ones, about the instructional process and the academic activities outside the classroom that are imperative for survival as a college teacher. "College Teaching" uses a question-answer format to explore its nine parts. Readers of the book will find its conversational and personal tone to be a welcoming approach to exploring the complexities, dynamics, and joys of college teaching. (From the Publisher)

With higher education’s refocus over the last three decades on bringing greater recognition and reward to good teaching, the idea of peer review has gained popularity. One tool for documenting and reflecting on the quality of teaching and student learning is a course portfolio. A course portfolio captures and makes visible the careful, difficult, and intentional scholarly work of planning and teaching a course. Illustrated through examples of course portfolios created during a four-year project on peer review of teaching, this book demonstrates how faculty can integrate well-designed peer review into their daily professional lives, thus improving their teaching by incorporating a means for assessment and collaboration and revealing the student learning that happens with effective teaching within an institutional reward systems. This book offers a model of peer review intended to help faculty document, assess, reflect on, and improve teaching and student learning through the use of a course portfolio. It features a rich collection of materials—including four dozen exhibits to help assemble a portfolio, reviewers’ comments, and reflections drawn from more than 200 professors and portfolio authors in various disciplines and institutions—that faculty can use to develop their course portfolios to be used in their peer review of teaching. (From the Publisher)

Conquering the Content is a practical resource for faculty who tackle overwhelming amounts of course content that must be tailored for Web-based learning. This important guide offers step-by-step instructions for creating online learning experiences that are manageable, effective, and of the highest quality. Written by Robin M. Smith, an expert in the field on online learning, Conquering the Content provides guidance for incorporating learning theory into practical online courses. Designed for online instructors at all levels of experience, the book is filled with the templates, learning guides, and sample files that can be easily applied to construct and manage course content. (From the Publisher)

Faculty are often motivated to change the activities and design of their courses for reasons not based on data. In Meaningful Course Revision, the author seeks instead to illustrate how the appropriate use of multiple, direct measures of student-learning outcomes can lead to enhanced course development and revision. While providing an outline of methods for creating significant learning experiences, the book also includes practical suggestions for shaping the design of a course to meet student needs. Meaningful Course Revision urges a rethinking of teaching and learning. By making student advancement its focal point, it offers guidance through * Data-based decision making * Designing course-based assessment activities * Using data to enhance innovation in course redesign * Rethinking teaching and learning * Embedding assessment activities in meaningful ways * Planning the course * Closing the feedback loop * Moving from course-level decision making to departmental curriculum planning * Creating a culture of student-learning outcomes assessment Written for faculty seeking advice on how to keep their teaching interesting and effective, Meaningful Course Revision is a practical guide for collecting information about how well students are reaching course goals, learning what impact course changes are having on student learning, and putting courses into a cycle of continual revision and improvement. (From the Publisher)