Resources

Teaching large classes can be intimidating to new instructors, but attending one can also be intimidating to students. Instructors can enhance student engagement in the classroom by facilitating interaction among students and between students and the instructor

High Impact Educational Practices are defined as “an investment of time and energy over an extended period that has unusually positive effects on student engagement in educationally purposeful behavior.” Studies indicate that students who participate more frequently in educationally purposeful activities are more satisfied with their college experience.

Consider “flipping” the class—moving the content coverage to outside the class in order to devote precious, in-class time to practice of important course skills.This brief note gives a helpful overview of this emerging concept in higher education (with links).

Instructors’ attentiveness to the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environments creates a classroom climate conducive to student engagement with the content and skills of the discipline.

Matching student learning activites to course outcomes is one of the most important parts of the learning design process. This brief note provides questions to help you select learning strategies that align with the course outcomes, assessments, and goals.

What do you do when things get sluggish and everyone just wishes the course were over? Do something different

This White Paper describes how four campuses with different Protestant histories developed conversations about their institutions’ secular boundaries. Paying attention to and beginning to analyze what makes this conversation difficult helps educators and students see the conversation’s promise—for student learning and civic life.

Click Here for Book Review Abstract: The Invisible Web, also known as the Deep Web, is a huge repository of underutilized resources that can be richly rewarding to searchers who make the effort to find them. Since Jane Devine and Francine Egger-Sider explored the educational potentials of this realm in Going Beyond Google: The Invisible Web in Learning and Teaching, the information world has grown even more complex, with more participants, more content, more formats, and more means of access. Demonstrating why teaching the Invisible Web should be a requirement for information literacy education in the 21st century, here the authors expand on the teaching foundation provided in the first book and persuasively argue that the Invisible Web is still relevant not only to student research but also to everyday life. Intended for anyone who conducts research on the web, including students, teachers, information professionals, and general users, their book - Defines the characteristics of the Invisible Web, both technologically and cognitively - Provides a literature review of students’ information-seeking habits, concentrating on recent research - Surveys the theory and practice of teaching the Invisible Web - Shows ways to transform students into  better researchers - Highlights teaching resources such as graphics, videos, and tutorials - Offers an assortment of tools, both public and proprietary, for trawling the Invisible Web - Looks at the future of the Invisible Web, with thoughts on how changes in search technology will affect users, particularly students learning to conduct research (From the Publisher)

Rethinking Online Education analyzes online educational materials on the recent Iraq war aimed to be used by U.S. educators in elementary and secondary schools. It is suggested that far from being ideologically neutral, these educational materials weave together resources which provide a coherent view of the Iraq war theme, and can thus been seen as constituting a kind of an informal curriculum. Mitsikopoulou argues that the teacher resources adhere to different pedagogical discourses and constitute materializations of two broad approaches to education. A number of pedagogical issues are also raised in the discussion: What is the difference between critical thinking and critical pedagogy? How is the genre of lesson plan realized in different teaching philosophies and how do curricular texts change when they are delivered online? This important book highlights the need to explore the new forms of textuality which emerge from online curricular materials and to develop an understanding of the processes of text composition, distribution and consumption. (From the Publisher)

A short essay that compares the collaborative and cooperative learning to clarify the underlying nature of interactive learning