Resources

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: In this volume, the authors focus on the importance of inclusive teaching and the role faculty can play in helping students achieve, though not necessarily in the same way. To teach with a focus on inclusion means to believe that every person has the ability to learn. It means that most individuals want to learn, to improve their ability to better understand the world in which they live, and to be able to navigate their pathways of life. This volume includes the following topics: • best practices for teaching students with social, economic, gender, or ethnic differences • adjustments to the teaching and learning process to focus on inclusion • strategies for teaching that help learners connect what they know with the information presented • environments that maximize learners’ academic and social growth. The premise of inclusive teaching works to demonstrate that all people can and do learn. Educators and administrators can incorporate the techniques of inclusive learning and help learners retain more information. This is the 140th volume of the quarterly Jossey-Bass higher education series New Directions for Teaching and Learning. It offers a comprehensive range of ideas and techniques for improving college teaching based on the experience of seasoned instructors and the latest findings of educational and psychological researchers. (From the Publisher)

Threaded discussion on the POD listserv in 2015. Thirteen directors of university and college teaching centers discuss which books about teaching they’ve used successfully for faculty reading groups.

Click Here for Book Review For many in international education, assessment can seem daunting and overwhelming, especially given that such efforts need to involve much more than a pre/post survey. This book is a practical guide to learning-outcomes assessment in international education for practitioners who are starting to engage with the process, as well as for those who want to improve the quality and effectiveness of their assessment efforts. Assuming no prior knowledge, the book offers an accessible and clear road map to the application of assessment. Recognizing that a “one size fits all” approach cannot capture the diversity of goals and settings of international education, or the rich variety of programs and organizations involved in delivering it, author Darla Deardorff provides the reader with foundational principles and knowledge to develop appropriate assessment approaches for evaluating and improving student learning outcomes, which are the drivers of higher education internationalization. She provides the background for assessment, highlights how the characteristics of international education pose unique challenges for assessment, considers the contexts to which assessment may be applied – whether in cross-border or “at home” institutional experiences, such as in curricular, co-curricular or extracurricular settings – and distills a seemingly convoluted process into a manageable approach. From the basics of getting started in assessment to highlighting pitfalls to avoid, this book offers a holistic and practical approach to assessment that moves beyond seeing assessment as a discrete activity to on-going process that is integrated into student learning. There is also a unique chapter for education leaders on assessment essentials from a leadership-perspective. The appendices include worksheets for implementing assessment, creating an assessment team, and getting buy-in from stakeholders. Other appendices include a list of standards adapted to international education outcomes assessment, guidance on assessing intercultural competence, and resources. This book reflects the author’s experience of over a decade of work with international education programs and higher education institutions around the world, and synthesizes what she has learned into an easy-to-use resource for anyone who wants to understand and utilize effective assessment in the field of international education. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Integrating Teaching and Technology: A Matrix for Professional Faculty Development provides college faculty and administrators with the foundations for a new model for integrating the two most critical dimensions of teaching and learning, pedagogy and technology: the Integrated Readiness Matrix (IRM). Integrating Teaching and Technology began as dialogue among the authors and their university peers focusing on how best to integrate technology into instruction. Achieving this goal requires all faculty to be conversant with the theories of learning, the taxonomies and domains of learning, and a new methodology for preparing and developing college faculty for a career of classroom teaching. Only by building on a foundation of educational theories can we “meet students where they are” while designing instruction that fosters student growth and achievement. (From the Publisher)

Ryan Trauman’s blog site on Writing Studies, rhetoric and composition, Digital Humanities and future forms of scholarship

Provides culturally responsive teaching and learning resources for faculty and staff working with Native students -- building bridges across cultural boundaries and crossing bridges to increase understanding between Native and Non-Native educators and students.

Podcast. A fortnightly series of conversations with teachers about teaching. We talk mostly with faculty in higher education, but will occasionally talk with other teachers too. We started this podcast to share ideas and build community among folks who care about teaching. 

This paper discusses undergraduate ethics education from the point of view of a learning-outcomes centered approach to curriculum design. It aims to identify the kinds of learning-out comes that Ethics Across the Curriculum programs ought to aim at and be judged successful by. The first section explains the learning-outcomes-centered approach to designing and evaluating curriculum proposals. The second section applies this approach specifically to ethics education for undergraduates. It concludes with a proposal for Ideal Learning Outcomes for ethics education in an undergraduate curriculum. The third section asks which of these learning outcomes can reasonably be achieved by an Ethics Across the Curriculum program and which of these learning outcomes could not dependably be achieved unless a formal course in ethics is a requirement for every student. The fourth section briefly examines teaching strategies for Ethics Across the Curriculum programs and discusses ways of helping faculty in Ethics Across the Curriculum programs become effective ethics teachers.

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: The allure of educational technology is easy to understand. Classroom instruction is an expensive and time-consuming process fraught with contradictory theories and frustratingly uneven results. Educators, inspired by machines’ contributions to modern life, have been using technology to facilitate teaching for centuries. In Teaching Machines, Bill Ferster examines past attempts to automate instruction from the earliest use of the postal service for distance education to the current maelstrom surrounding Massive Open Online Courses. He tells the stories of the entrepreneurs and visionaries who, beginning in the colonial era, developed and promoted various instructional technologies. Ferster touches on a wide range of attempts to enhance the classroom experience with machines, from hornbooks, the Chautauqua movement, and correspondence courses to B. F. Skinner’s teaching machine, intelligent tutoring systems, and eLearning. The famed progressive teachers, researchers, and administrators that the book highlights often overcame substantial hurdles to implement their ideas, but not all of them succeeded in improving the quality of education. Teaching Machines provides invaluable new insight into our current debate over the efficacy of educational technology. (From the Publisher)