Resources

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)

Mestizo Christianity is the most comprehensive introduction to the work of the principle figures in U.S. Hispanic theology — Protestant as well as Catholic. Other anthologies exist but Mestizo Christianity provides the best and most representative writing by each of fourteen "first generation" theologians, in their areas of specialization. Since by every account the Latino/Hispanic church will continue to grow well into the twenty-first century, Mestizo Christianity provides a grounding in an area of increasing theological and pastoral importance. Topics include affirming Hispanic culture and theological identity: methodology; popular religiosity; women's voices; social ethics; spirituality; and ecumenical perspectives. Also included is a brief biography of Hispanic theology, the only one of its kind. Excerpt from Book: The God-Meaning of Our Mexican-American Identity and Mission. "God chose those whom the world considers absurd to shame the wise" It is in the light of our faith that we discover our ultimate identity as God's chosen people. It is in the very cultural identity of Jesus the Galilean and in his way from Galilee to Jerusalem that the real ultimate meaning of our own cultural identity and mission to society become clear. For those who ordinarily have a good sense of belonging, the idea of being chosen is nothing special. But for one who has been consistently ignored or rejected, the idea of being noticed, accepted, and especially chosen is not only good news, but new life. For in being chosen, what was nothing now becomes something, and what was dead now comes to life. In the light of the Judeo-Christian tradition, our experience of rejection and margination is converted from human curse to the very sign of divine predilection. It is evident from the scriptures that God chooses the outcasts of the world not exclusively but definitely in a preferential way. Those whom the world ignores, God loves in a special way. But God does not choose the poor and the lowly just to keep them down and make them feel good in their misery. Such an election would be the very opposite of good news and it would truly be the opium to keep the poor quiet and domesticated. God chooses the poor and the marginated of the world to be agents of the new creation. The experience of being wanted as one is, of being needed and of being chosen, is a real and profound rebirth. Those who had been made to consider themselves as nothing or as inferior will now begin to appreciate the full stature of being human beings. Out of the new self-image, new powers will be released, which have always been there but have not been able to surface. Through this experience, the sufferings of the past are healed though not forgotten, and they should not be forgotten. For it is precisely out of the condition of suffering that the people are chosen so as to initiate a new way of life where others will not have to suffer what the poor have suffered in the past. When one forgets the experience of suffering, as has happened to many of our migrant groups in this country, such as the Irish in Boston, then they simply inflict the same insults upon others that had previously been inflicted upon them. The greater the suffering and the more vivid the memory of it, the greater the challenge will be to initiate changes so as to eliminate the root causes of the evils which cause the suffering. It is the wounded healer who has not forgotten the pain of the wounds who can be the greatest healer of the illnesses of society. (From the Publisher)