Resources

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Culture plays an overarching role that impacts investment, planning, design, development, delivery, and the learning outcomes of online education. This groundbreaking book remedies a dearth of empirical research on how digital cultures and teaching and learning cultures intersect, and offers grounded theory and practical guidance on how to integrate cultural needs and sensibilities with the innovative opportunities offered by online learning. This book provides a unique analysis of culture in online education from a global perspective, and offers: * An overview of the influences that culture has on teaching, online learning, and technology * Culture-sensitive instructional design strategies and teaching guidelines for online instructors and trainers * Facilitation and support strategies for online learners from different cultures * An overview on issues of design, development, communication, and support from a cross-cultural perspective * An overview of how online education is perceived, planned, implemented, and evaluated differently in various cultural contexts Written by international experts in the field of online learning, this text constitutes with a comprehensive comparative introduction to the role of culture in online education. It offers essential guidance for practitioners, researchers, instructors, and anyone working with online students from around the world. This text is also appropriate for graduate-level Educational Technology and Comparative and International Learning programs. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: This book serves as an introduction to using online teaching technologies and hybrid forms of teaching for experiential learning and civic engagement. Service-learning has kept pace neither with the rapid growth in e-learning in all its forms nor with the reality that an increasing number of students are learning online without exposure to the benefits of this powerful pedagogy. Eservice-learning (electronic service-learning) combines service-learning and on-line learning and enables the delivery of the instruction and/or the service to occur partially or fully online. Eservice-learning allows students anywhere, regardless of geography, physical constraints, work schedule, or other access limitations, to experience service-learning. It reciprocally also equips online learning with a powerful tool for engaging students. In eservice-learning, the core components of service, learning, and reflection may take a different form due to the online medium—for example, reflection often occurs through discussion board interactions, journals, wikis, or blogs in an eservice-learning course. Moreover, the service, though still community-based, creates a world of opportunities to connect students with communities across the globe—as well as at their very own doorstep. This book introduces the reader to the four emerging types of eservice-learning, from Extreme EService-Learning (XE-SL) classes where 100% of the instruction and 100% of the service occur online, to three distinct forms of hybrid where either the service or the instruction are delivered wholly on-line – with students, for instance, providing online products for far-away community partners – or in which both are delivered on-site and online. It considers the instructional potential of common mobile technologies – phones, tablets and mobile reading devices. The authors also address potential limitations, such as technology challenges, difficulties sustaining three-way communication among the instructor, community partner, and students, and added workload. The book includes research studies on effectiveness as well as examples of practice such drafting grants for a community partner, an informational technology class building online communities for an autism group, and an online education class providing virtual mentoring to at-risk students in New Orleans from across the country. (From the Publisher)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: “College teaching is not rocket science – it’s much, much harder.” Diana Laurillard, University of London College faculty, both adjunct and full-time, stand with their students at the coalface of learning, wishing for more to succeed and disappointed at how illusory academic success is for so many. Among the array of investments colleges are making to improve student outcomes, from predictive data analysis to enhanced advising, too little attention is paid to supporting faculty. Yet the impact of teacher and teaching on student learning is incontrovertible. Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters! stands against the tide – celebrating the incredible work faculty members do each day and challenging them to expand their capacity to present their content expertise effectively. This book presents a model of embedded professional development, which capitalizes on the affordances of technology to enable groups of faculty to examine their practice in a non-evaluative context, but with a clear focus on improvement. The core of the work involves individual reflection and the design provides for an accessible way to “see” into the classrooms of discipline peers. Most importantly, the Taking College Teaching Seriously experience is not an intense one-shot, but rather a structured opportunity for a faculty member to examine and adapt practice over time and to assess the impact of changes on student learning. Faculty who have participated in the Taking College Teaching Seriously experience found it to be transformative: • English Professor, Kentucky: Participating in (the work) this year has helped me to be more reflective in every single action. I constantly analyze how each session went… (it) gave me the tools to think about every minute detail of a classroom. • Adjunct Math Professor, Mississippi: Speaking as an adjunct, I have valued the chance to share my teaching and get ideas from others. I can honestly say that this experience has been a lifeline of sorts this year. In a “magic wand” instructional setting, I’d wish for the kind of honest, respectful and professionally challenging discussions we have in Classroom Notebook* at weekly staff meetings. *Classroom Notebook is the Taking College Teaching Seriously online platform • Math Professor, NJ: I think the continual self-evaluation and reflection allowed us to work together to brainstorm improvements and positive tweaks to be more purposeful in our classrooms as opposed to just randomly reaching in the dark for ideas and techniques in HOPE of success. Taking College Teaching Seriously: Pedagogy Matters! breaks new ground in professional development. Each faculty member is at the center of the learning experience, stimulated and supported by peers working in similar contexts. They share a desire to see more students learn deeply and find that honing their skill at adapting to the learning needs of specific classes and students allows them to realize this goal. Uniquely, Taking College Teaching Seriously illuminates the link between faculty teaching expertise and improving student outcomes. The introduction to the book examines the challenges facing faculty in higher education today and reviews the literature on teaching and learning. Chapter 1 looks at the analytical foundations for all of the model’s elements, from adult learning theory to communities of practice, and Chapter 2 presents the model’s theory of change. Chapter 3 describes the model in detail and Chapters 4 and 5 concern the infrastructure of the faculty collaborative community, focusing on both its interpersonal and technological dimensions. The book concludes in Chapter 6 with an assessment of the value of this approach to professional development and a call to action for faculty member engagement in this important work, so essential to both professional passion and mandate. (From the Publisher)