Resources

"For those who think online learning can't be truly interactive, Patti Shank and her colleagues clearly demonstrate—in hundreds of examples—that it can. The real lesson in The Online Learning Idea Book is that technology doesn't build interactive learning; creative thinking and good, solid instructional design does. Using even a smidgen of the great ideas in this book will increase the learning effectiveness of any online program." —Marc J. Rosenberg, consultant, and author of Beyond E-Learning "Patti Shank has collected great ideas about online learning and teaching from all over the globe. If you are an online instructor or instructional designer looking for new ways to involve and engage your learners, you'll be inspired by this book!"—Terry Morris, associate professor, William Rainey Harper Colleges Filled with techniques, tools, tips, examples, resources, and dozens of "great ideas,? this invaluable resource helps people who are looking to build online instructional materials — or improve existing materials — discover and implement what the best and brightest in industry and education are doing to make online learning more engaging and compelling. Increase your know-how in the following areas: • Look and Feel: how to increase ease-of-use • Graphics and Multimedia: how to make instructional graphics engaging and compelling • Activities: how to make instruction itself engaging and compelling • Tools: how to use a variety of online tools • Instructional Design: how to design better and faster. (From the Publisher)

Students' Experiences of e-learning in Higher Education helps higher education instructors and university managers understand how e-learning relates to, and can be integrated with, other student experiences of learning. Grounded in relevant international research, the book is distinctive in that it foregrounds students' experiences of learning, emphasizing the importance of how students interpret the challenges set before them, along with their conceptions of learning and their approaches to learning. The way students interpret task requirements greatly affects learning outcomes, and those interpretations are in turn influenced by how students read the larger environment in which they study. The authors argue that a systemic understanding is necessary for the effective design and management of modern learning environments, whether lectures, seminars, laboratories or private study. This ecological understanding must also acknowledge, though, the agency of learners as active interpreters of their environment and its culture, values and challenges. Students' Experiences of e-learning in Higher Education reports research outcomes that locate e-learning within the broader ecology of higher education and: * Offers a holistic treatment of e-learning in higher education, reflecting the need for integrating e-learning and other aspects of the student learning experience * Reports research on students' experiences with e-learning conducted by authors in the United States, Europe, and Australia * Synthesizes key themes in recent international research and summarizes their implicationsfor teachers and managers. (From the Publisher)

Written for both new and existing lecturers, this handbook is based upon exemplary practice and case studies. It gives readers the information they will need to ensure that teaching practice is in line with current standards and best practice. (From the Publisher)

You go into teaching with high hopes: to inspire students, to motivate them to learn, to help them love your subject. Then you find yourself facing a crowd of expectant faces on the first day of the first semester, and you think “Now what do I do?” Practical and lively, On Course is full of experience-tested, research-based advice for graduate students and new teaching faculty. It provides a range of innovative and traditional strategies that work well without requiring extensive preparation or long grading sessions when you’re trying to meet your own demanding research and service requirements. What do you put on the syllabus? How do you balance lectures with group assignments or discussions—and how do you get a dialogue going when the students won’t participate? What grading system is fairest and most efficient for your class? Should you post lecture notes on a website? How do you prevent cheating, and what do you do if it occurs? How can you help the student with serious personal problems without becoming overly involved? And what do you do about the student who won’t turn off his cell phone? Packed with anecdotes and concrete suggestions, this book will keep both inexperienced and veteran teachers on course as they navigate the calms and storms of classroom life. (From the Publisher)

This comprehensive book focuses squarely on academic portfolios, which may prove to be the most innovative and promising faculty evaluation and development technique in years. The authors identify key issues, red flag warnings, and benchmarks for success, describing the what, why, and how of developing academic portfolios. The book includes an extensively tested step-by-step approach to creating portfolios and lists 21 possible portfolio items covering teaching, research/scholarship, and service from which faculty can choose the ones most relevant to them. The thrust of this book is unique: • It provides time-tested strategies and proven advice for getting started with portfolios. • It includes a research-based rubric grounded in input from 200 faculty members and department chairs from across disciplines and institutions. • It examines specific guiding questions to consider when preparing every subsection of the portfolio. • It presents 18 portfolio models from 16 different academic disciplines. Designed for faculty members, department chairs, deans, and members of promotion and tenure committees, all of whom are essential partners in developing successful academic portfolio programs, the book will also be useful to graduate students, especially those planning careers as faculty members. (From the Publisher)

Higher education institutions of all kinds—across the United States and around the world—have rapidly expanded the use of electronic portfolios in a broad range of applications including general education, the major, personal planning, freshman learning communities, advising, assessing, and career planning. Widespread use creates an urgent need to evaluate the implementation and impact of eportfolios. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, the contributors to this book—all of whom have been engaged with the Inter/National Coalition for Electronic Portfolio Research—have undertaken research on how eportfolios influence learning and the learning environment for students, faculty members, and institutions. This book features emergent results of studies from 20 institutions that have examined effects on student reflection, integrative learning, establishing identity, organizational learning, and designs for learning supported by technology. It also describes how institutions have responded to multiple challenges in eportfolio development, from engaging faculty to going to scale. These studies exemplify how eportfolios can spark disciplinary identity, increase retention, address accountability, improve writing, and contribute to accreditation. The chapters demonstrate the applications of eportfolios at community colleges, small private colleges, comprehensive universities, research universities, and a state system. (From the Publisher)