Resources

From the Executive Summary: As the U.S. population has grown more racially and ethnically diverse, so too have students across all levels of higher education. The Hispanic population’s growing numbers and rising postsecondary enrollment rates figured centrally in both trends. While much progress has been made for nearly all groups, we nonetheless see stagnant and low levels of secondary school completion, college participation, and educational attainment for many communities of color. At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, advances in Black students’ enrollment and attainment have been accompanied by some of the lowest persistence rates, highest undergraduate dropout rates, highest borrowing rates, and largest debt burdens of any group. How students pay for higher education varied considerably by race and ethnicity, especially in terms of who borrows and who leaves college with high levels of student loan debt. Racial and ethnic diversity among college faculty, staff, and administrators still doesn’t reflect that of today’s college students.

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A free online resource intended to help theological educators integrate ministry-related digital literacies throughout theological education curricula. The toolkit includes model assignments, teaching activities, and how-to guides for teaching with technology, and links to relevant research.  

This book presents the research-based case that Learner Centered Teaching (LCT) offers the best means to optimize student learning in college, and offers examples and ideas for putting it into practice, as well the underlying rationale. It also starts from the premise that many faculty are much closer to being learner centered teachers than they think, but don’t have the full conceptual understanding of the process to achieve its full impact. There is sometimes a gap between what we would like to achieve in our teaching and the knowledge and strategies needed to make it happen. LCT keeps all of the good features of a teacher-centered approach and applies them in ways that are in better harmony with how our brains learn. It, for instance, embraces the teacher as expert as well as the appropriate use of lecture, while also offering new, effective ways to replace practices that don’t optimizing student learning. Neuroscience, biology and cognitive science research have made it clear that it is the one who does the work who does the learning. Many faculty do too much of the work for their students, which results in diminished student learning. To enable faculty to navigate this shift, Terry Doyle presents an LCT-based approach to course design that draws on current brain research on cognition and learning; on addressing the affective concerns of students; on proven approaches to improve student’s comprehension and recall; on transitioning from “teller of knowledge” to a “facilitator of learning”; on the design of authentic assessment strategies – such as engaging students in learning experiences that model the real world work they will be asked to do when they graduate; and on successful communication techniques. The presentation is informed by the questions and concerns raised by faculty from over sixty colleges with whom Terry Doyle has worked; and on the response from an equal number of regional, national and international conferences at which he has presented on topics related to LCT. (From the Publisher)

What makes the modern university different from any other corporation?' asked Columbia's Andrew Delbanco recently in the New York Times. 'There is more and more reason to think: less and less,' he answered.In this provocative book, Frank Donoghue shows how this growing corporate culture of higher education threatens its most fundamental values by erasing one of its defining features: the tenured professor.Taking a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last twenty years, Donoghue outlines a web of forces—social, political, and institutional—dismantling the professoriate. Today, fewer than 30 percent of college and university teachers are tenured or on tenure tracks, and signs point to a future where professors will disappear. Why? What will universities look like without professors? Who will teach? Why should it matter? The fate of the professor, Donoghue shows, has always been tied to that of the liberal arts —with thehumanities at its core. The rise to prominence of the American university has been defined by the strength of the humanities and by the central role of the autonomous, tenured professor who can be both scholar and teacher. Yet in today's market-driven, rank- and ratings-obsessed world of higher education, corporate logic prevails: faculties are to be managed for optimal efficiency, productivity, and competitive advantage; casual armies of adjuncts and graduate students now fill the demand for teachers.Bypassing the distractions of the culture wars and other 'crises,' Donoghue sheds light on the structural changes in higher education—the rise of community colleges and for-profit universities, the frenzied pursuit ofprestige everywhere, the brutally competitive realities facing new Ph.D.s —that threaten the survival of professors as we've known them. There are no quick fixes in The Last Professors; rather, Donoghue offers his fellow teachers and scholarsan essential field guide to making their way in a world that no longer has room for their dreams. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Best Practices for Flipping the College Classroom provides a comprehensive overview and systematic assessment of the flipped classroom methodology in higher education. The book: • Reviews various pedagogical theories that inform flipped classroom practice and provides a brief history from its inception in K–12 to its implementation in higher education. • Offers well-developed and instructive case studies chronicling the implementation of flipped strategies across a broad spectrum of academic disciplines, physical environments, and student populations. • Provides insights and suggestions to instructors in higher education for the implementation of flipped strategies in their own courses by offering reflections on learning outcomes and student success in flipped classrooms compared with those employing more traditional models and by describing relevant technologies. • Discusses observations and analyses of student perceptions of flipping the classroom as well as student practices and behaviors particular to flipped classroom models. • Illuminates several research models and approaches for use and modification by teacher-scholars interested in building on this research on their own campuses. The evidence presented on the flipped classroom methodology by its supporters and detractors at all levels has thus far been almost entirely anecdotal or otherwise unreliable. Best Practices for Flipping the College Classroomis the first book to provide faculty members nuanced qualitative and quantitative evidence that both supports and challenges the value of flipping the college classroom. (From the Publisher)

Podcast Series. Leading thinkers in the church, the academy, and the non-profit world giving the talk of their lives in 20-minutes or less.