Resources

In instructional design for higher education, it is important to the success of all students to take into account the differences in individual learning styles. Research indicates that different student populations have characteristically different approaches to learning and that teachers can use patterns of effective practice to foster success across cognitive styles. (Author/MSE)

Journal Issue

A college student getting a liberal arts education ponders filling out a questionnaire that includes an opportunity for him to evaluate his instructor. At times it appears that the purpose of his education is just to entertain him.

Richard Miller, Laurie Patton and Stephen Webb ask several questions about the goals and aims of those teaching religious studies and what actually occurs in classrooms. The authors are concerned about the lack of a common working vocabulary for speaking about such philosophical issues. They note that teaching religion is typically classified according to one of two paradigms, either instrumental or transmission. The "instrumental" paradigm views teaching in terms of its technical components, while the "transmission" paradigm seeks to impart the concepts and tools necessary for critical analysis to the students. Miller, Patton and Webb propose a third alternative, the "rhetorical" paradigm. This model seeks to empower voices within the classroom, including that of the teacher. It requires teachers to reexamine the power relations present in the classroom and to reconfigure these relationship in such a way that students feel free to engage actively in the course. The authors consider the rhetorical model in light of the three specific subdisicplines of religious ethics, the comparative history of religions, and theology.

Berling discusses pluralism as one criterion of excellence for theological schools. She acknowledges the challenge to the very idea of excellence implicit in pluralism and thus the need to define adequate standards of excellence. She also indicates a concern with the education of faculties prepared to deal with issues of pluralism.

This essay, the first in a series about the priorities of the professoriate, offers a vision of the new American scholar. The first part of the essay examines the numerous activities that surround faculty work and how they relate, in a changing external environment, to the role of the scholar. The stage is set by defining how higher education relates to the larger purposes of American society and by noting the assumptions and consensus within which academic professionals have traditionally operated. The essay then examines how the contexts of faculty work are being transformed in the 1990s by financial constraints, the technological environment, and basic assumptions about work itself. The second part of the essay deals with how these changes affect and necessitate rethinking faculty careers. It discusses changes in the academic workplace, the shifting concept of scholarship, the interdependence of teaching and research, the relationship between personal and professional needs, interactive approaches to learning, working within a collaborative organization, the career implications of crossing knowledge domains and moving in and out of the academy, and tenure and alternative employment arrangements.

This paper will discuss some pedagogical principles and practices that can be employed in a particular type of distance learning that I refer to as asynchronous learning networks (ALNs). ALNs are courses offered exclusively on-line via the internet or a remote server in an asynchronous mode that involves no face-to-face interaction and no conventional classroom sessions. The pedagogical techniques described below were developed while participating in a Sloan Foundation supported distance learning project at the State University of New York at New Paltz (under the auspices of the SUNY Learning Network) and teaching a ALN sociology course titled "Social and Economic Development". Many of the ideas and strategies presented stem from conversations with, and the advice and comments of, teaching colleagues in the SUNY Learning Network and instructional developers at the Center for Learning and Technology at Empire State College.

Applies the quality concept of continuous improvement to academic departments. The goal of a continuous improvement initiative is for a department to become self-regarding, self-monitoring and self correcting – confident of the quality of their graduates’ knowledge. Idea Paper no. 35, from the series developed by the Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development, Kansas State University.

The primary objective of this article is to provide readers with guidance for designing effective group assignments and activities for classes and workshops. In doing so, we examine the forces that foster social loafing (uneven participation) in learning groups and identify four key variables that must be managed in order to create a group environment that is conducive for broad-based member participation and learning. We then discuss the impact of various types of activities and assignments on learning and group cohesiveness. Finally, we present a checklist that has been designed to evaluate the effectiveness group assignments in a wide variety of instructional settings and subject areas.