Resources
Informal student evaluations of faculty were started in the 1960's by enterprising college students.(1) Since then, their use has spread so that now they are administered in almost all American colleges and universities and are probably the main source of information used for evaluating faculty teaching performance.(2) There is an enormous literature on the subject of student evaluations of faculty (SEF).(3) The following is a summary of some developments in that literature that should be of special interest to faculty, with particular emphasis on criticisms of SEF that have emerged recently. But I begin with the arguments in favor of the use of SEF.
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The article discusses associate professors in the U.S., focusing on their overall happiness and attitudes related to their positions. The article cites a study conducted by the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at Harvard University which provides statistics related to the job satisfaction of associate professors in areas such as leadership, collaboration, and workload. The article explores the tenure track process for college teachers, notes that few personal and professional services are offered to mid-career professors, and provides comments from various associate professors including Judith C. Amburgey-Peters, Karen L. Kelsky, and Margaret Soltan.
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In this comprehensive resource, Raymond J. Wlodkowski and Margery B. Ginsberg describe how to meet the challenge of teaching intensive and accelerated courses to nontraditional learners and working adults. By making motivation and cultural relevance essential to instruction, they clearly show what instructors can do to enhance learning in classes that can last from three to six hours. Teaching Intensive and Accelerated Courses makes full use of the authors' twenty years of experience researching and teaching accelerated courses, along with selected strategies from Wlodkowski's classic Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn, to offer tried-and-true practices instructors can use to provide continuously engaging learning. (From the Publisher)
Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher education does. To truly effect change, the curriculum needs to be examined and aligned with learner-centered practices. In this book the authors offer both design specifications for a learner-centered approach to curriculum as well as practical recommendations for implementation and assessment. The book covers the need for redesigning curriculum, curriculum design in the instructional paradigm, learner-centered design in practice, implementation, program assessment (including a helpful rubric for this), innovating through technology, and learning spaces that support learner-centered curricula. (From the Publisher)
The Christian College Phenomenon explores the explosive growth over the last twenty years of institutions affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). While public institutions of higher learning in the United States experienced a 3% growth in enrollment from 1990-1996, CCCU institutions witnessed a 36.9% growth during that same period. And in 2006, enrollment over the previous year at public universities grew by 13% and at other private colleges by 28%, but enrollment at CCCU institutions rose by 70.6%. Editors Thomas Chesnes and Samuel Joeckel have taken an empirical approach, surveying over 1900 professors at ninety-five CCCU colleges and universities and 2300 students at twenty different schools. The editors compiled responses to quantitative and open-ended questions on topics from pedagogy and politics to faith learning integration; they then made that data available to nearly thirty scholars who have turned their considered responses into chapters that are now organized into seven book sections, covering topics in gender, evolution, faith, learning, scholarship, and race/ethnicity: • TARGET AUDIENCE: The Christian College Phenomenon goes out to all those who study trends in American universities. Scholars and analysts, regardless of their faith commitments, will be interested to see what's happening in the CCCU schools that have experienced tremendous enrollment growth, particularly in comparison to their counterparts. What are these schools doing differently that can give all universities a new perspective on movements in contemporary education? This book offers a window into possibilities (From the Publisher)
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