Resources

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)

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: Two of the most visible and important trends in higher education today are its exploding costs and the rapid expansion of online learning. Could the growth in online courses slow the rising cost of college and help solve the crisis of affordability? In this short and incisive book, William G. Bowen, one of the foremost experts on the intersection of education and economics, explains why, despite his earlier skepticism, he now believes technology has the potential to help rein in costs without negatively affecting student learning. As a former president of Princeton University, an economist, and author of many books on education, including the acclaimed bestseller The Shape of the River, Bowen speaks with unique expertise on the subject. Surveying the dizzying array of new technology-based teaching and learning initiatives, including the highly publicized emergence of "massive open online courses" (MOOCs), Bowen argues that such technologies could transform traditional higher education--allowing it at last to curb rising costs by increasing productivity, while preserving quality and protecting core values. But the challenges, which are organizational and philosophical as much as technological, are daunting. They include providing hard evidence of whether online education is cost-effective in various settings, rethinking the governance and decision-making structures of higher education, and developing customizable technological platforms. Yet, Bowen remains optimistic that the potential payoff is great. Based on the 2012 Tanner Lectures on Human Values, delivered at Stanford University, the book includes responses from Stanford president John Hennessy, Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner, Columbia University literature professor Andrew Delbanco, and Coursera cofounder Daphne Koller. (From the Publisher)

This link opens the first of 20 or more posts on the POD list-serv (for faculty development specialists) debating the status of  Multiple Intelligence Theory: no empirical validity? or still a useful construct for various reasons. Each response is visible from this link by clicking “next message.”

Chapter 3 of Florida State University’s Guide to Teaching & Learning Practices contains suggestions for creating a syllabus. Especially useful is the section with examples of writing policy and rule statements, and the sample syllabus.

Chapter 3 of Florida State University’s Guide to Teaching & Learning Practices contains suggestions for creating a syllabus. Especially useful is the section with examples of writing policy and rule statements, and the sample syllabus.

For a brief list of the major components of a syllabus, plus a link to a detail, four-page checklist, visit UC-Berkley’s “Components of a Syllabus” web page.