Resources

We live in a media culture, surrounded by ever-evolving digital technologies. Engaging Technology in Theological Education is a breakthrough book that invites religious educators to both engage and adapt their pedagogy to incorporate new media and technology. Drawing from her expertise as a seminary professor and consultant to religious institutions on the use of technology in teaching, Mary E. Hess invites professors, pastors, seminarians, and anyone interested in religious education to critically reflect on ways of engaging technology to enhance learning and to serve as critical interpreters within communities of faith. (From the Publisher)

This self-assessment guide will help all teaching professionals - whether in higher education, schools or management training - to assess, critique, reflect on and improve practice. The book is based on extensive research carried out at the Institute for Learning at the University of Hull. Fully practical, it looks at the generic skills of teaching, and guides readers to consider their own work both in the light of best practice and of their own strengths and weaknesses. In so doing it will help to assess and build teaching that is best for the individual and their situation. Developed around the basic functions of teaching, rather than the methods used to actually deliver learning, the Guide shows readers how to identify key elements of their teaching, and its context, and uses a matrix approach to suggest routes to bring about change. "Trouble-Shooting Your Teaching" will help to identify possible problem factors (intake, course, materials, teaching, support, assessment); to recognize agents of change (learners, self, colleagues, support staff, management, stake-holders); and to initiate improvement. It will be a valuable self-help tool for any teacher who is concerned about diagnosing, understanding and developing his or her own practice. (From the Publisher)

Gathering concepts and techniques borrowed from outstanding college professors, The Joy of Teaching provides helpful guidance for new instructors developing and teaching their first college courses. Award-winning professor Peter Filene proposes that teaching should not be like a baseball game in which the instructor pitches ideas to students to see whether they hit or strike out. Ideally, he says, teaching should resemble a game of Frisbee in which the teacher invites students to catch ideas and pass them on. Rather than prescribe any single model for success, Filene lays out the advantages and disadvantages of various pedagogical strategies, inviting new teachers to make choices based on their own personalities, values, and goals. Filene tackles everything from syllabus writing and lecture planning to class discussions, grading, and teacher-student interactions outside the classroom. The book's down-to-earth, accessible style makes it appropriate for teachers in all fields. Instructors in the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences will all welcome its invaluable tips for successful teaching and learning. (From the Publisher)

Suskie (Towson U.) believes in developing an assessment culture in schools and universities. She describes assessment as a four-step continuous cycle of establishing learning goals, providing learning opportunities, assessing student learning, and making good use of results. She provides rubrics for evaluating a variety of learning opportunities and media, and supplies model examinations, surveys, checklists, and reports for publication. (From the Publisher)

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) refers to an array of classroom practices that promote student learning through guided and, increasingly independent investigation of complex questions and problems. Rather than teaching the results of others' investigations, which students learn passively, instructors assist students in mastering and learning through the process of active investigation itself. IGL develops critical thinking, independent inquiry, students' responsibility for their own learning and intellectual growth and maturity. The 1999 Boyer Commission Report emphasized the importance of establishing "a firm grounding in inquiry-based learning and communication of information and ideas". While this approach capitalizes on one of the key strengths of research universities, the expertise of its faculty in research, it is one that can be fruitfully adopted throughout higher education. North Carolina State University is at the forefront of the development and implementation of IGL both at the course level and as part of a successful faculty-led process of reform of undergraduate education in a complex research institution. This book documents and explores NCSU's IGL initiative from a variety of perspectives: how faculty arrived at their current understanding of inquiry-guided learning and how they have interpreted it at various levels -- the individual course, the major, the college, the university-wide program, and the undergraduate curriculum as a whole. The contributors show how IGL has been dovetailed with other complementary efforts and programs, and how they have assessed its impact. The book is divided into four parts, the first briefly summarizing the history of the initiative. Part Two, the largest section, describes how various instructors, departments, and colleges in a range of disciplines have interpreted inquiry-guided learning. It provides examples from disciplines as varied as ecology, engineering, foreign language learning, history, music, microbiology, physics and psychology. It also outlines the potential for even broader dissemination of inquiry-guided learning in the undergraduate curriculum as a whole. Part Three describes two inquiry-guided learning programs for first year students and the interesting ways in which NCSU's university-wide writing and speaking program and growing service learning program support inquiry-guided learning. Part Four documents how the institution has supported instructors (and how they have supported themselves) as well as the methods used to assess the impact of inquiry-guided learning on students, faculty, and the institution as a whole. The book has been written with three audiences in mind: instructors who want to use inquiry-guided learning in their classrooms, faculty developers considering supporting comparable efforts on their campuses, and administrators interested in managing similar undergraduate reform efforts. It will also appeal to instructors of courses in the administration of higher education who are looking for relevant case studies of reform. While this is a model successfully implemented at a research university, it is one that is relevant for all institutions of higher education. (From the Publisher)

Teachers in higher education are constantly looking for ways to engage students and motivate them to respond creatively and actively to their disciplines -- but frequently lack the formal grounding in teaching to design effective courses and implement appropriate learning strategies. This book reflects and incorporates McGill University's thirty years' experience developing teaching programs and workshops at its Centre for University Teaching and Learning. Eight authors from the Centre, working as a coordinated team, here develop their most successful program into a portable workshop for anyone who is interested in improving their teaching knowledge and skills. The program in question is a week-long intensive workshop that offers professors in an opportunity to discuss their teaching, reflect on it, and put new strategies into practice to enhance the quality of student learning. This book takes the reader through the process, walking him or her through the principles of course design and teaching, and providing concepts to frame them within the reader's disciplinary knowledge and expertise. The book also incorporates the perspectives of professors from a wide range of disciplines who participated in the program, and who offer their personal accounts of conceptual change about teaching and learning and their current involvement toward the improvement of student learning. This book will appeal to new and seasoned teachers in higher education, as well as to graduate students planning an academic career and wanting to develop their teaching skills. For faculty developers the book captures and reflects the thinking behind the development of this workshop, its evolution since it was first implemented in 1993, and constitutes a practical guide for designing and implementing similar workshops. (From the Publisher)

Engaging the Online Learners includes an innovative framework—the Phases of Engagement—that helps instructors become more involved as knowledge generators and cofacilitators of a course. The book also provides specific ideas for tested activities (collected from experienced online instructors across the nation) that can go a long way to improving online learning. Engaging the Online Learner offers the tools and information needed to: · Convert classroom activities to an online environment and use online activities in a classroom-based course · Assess the learning that occurs as a result of collaborative activities · Phase-in activities that promote engagement among online learners · Help online learners use online tools · Build peer interaction through peer partnerships and team activities · Create authentic activities · Implement games and simulations (From the Publisher)

Theory and Practice of Online Learning, edited by Terry Anderson and Fathi Elloumi, is concerned with assisting providers of online education with useful tools to carry out the teaching and learning transactions online. It presents, in an easily readable form, the theory, administration, tools, and methods of designing and delivering learning online. By doing so, the authors bring to the teaching community a valuable product which should go a long way in popularizing the use of the learning technologies. Education, more than any other human endeavor, should be a real and lasting beneficiary of the ICT revolution. However the potential of this revolution can only be realized if those engaged in delivering education are knowledgeable, skilled, and able to apply these technologies effectively and efficiently. Despite the loud rhetoric of recent times, the uptake of learning technologies by the educational community is rather slow, reflecting partly the low levels of investment, in money and time, in the training of educational workers by individuals and their institutions, as well as the paucity of training materials on the subject. This publication, with its clarity and detail, greatly enhances our knowledge of the issues and our skills in addressing them. (From the Publisher)

Research has shown that in order to develop information literacy skills, students must be given repeated opportunities throughout their college years to acquire and exercise these skills in their daily lives. Integrating Information Literacy into the Higher Education Curriculum is filled with information and practical examples from a wide variety of institutions that show how information literacy programs and partnerships can transform the higher education teaching and learning environments. The contributors to this important resource are experts in the field and include such leaders as Pam Baker, Amelie Brown. Lynn Cameron, Renee R. Curry, Susan Carol Curzon, Trudi E.Jacobson, Bonnie Gratch Lindauer, Ilene F. Rockman, and Patrick Sullivan. The Foreword is by Patricia Senn Breivik. (From the Publisher)