Resources

Common faculty concerns about implementing student-centered learning are discussed, and useful techniques for addressing them are offered. Issues include budgeting in-class activity time, losing control of the class, uncompleted assignments, student understanding of open-ended problems, student dislike or abuse of group work, and helping at-risk students become involved.

Provides information on the availability of data on teaching, learning and technology. Details on the study questions posed by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute which focused on results; Role of technology in the quality and cost of lower-division composition courses of the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI); Disadvantages of the IUPUI composition students; Effect of technology use on costs.

A short article in which a teaching-scholar defines what she means by “active and meaningful learning,” discusses unstructured cooperative learning and critical thinking, and reflects on experience in using these concepts in the courses she teaches and the textbooks she writes. Idea Paper no. 34, from the series developed by the Center for Faculty Evaluation and Development, Kansas State University.

Asserts that faculty lack the continuing conversation with colleagues that could help them grow more fully into the demands of the teacher's craft. Possible reasons for the privatization of teaching; Good teaching as more than technique; Topics for talk about good teaching; Ground rules for creative conversation; More.

Experiential methods--that is, methods that rely on students' own life experiences and often involve a high degree of self-disclosure--are becoming increasingly common in sociology courses that deal with difficult and controversial subjects such as gender, race, and sexuality. Yet these methods may be inappropriate and unethical, especially when students are expected to revel very personal, even painful, information about themselves. The benefits and risks involved in using such methods are presented in this paper in a dialogue between an instructor and a student.

This paper discusses how the growth of technology and its impact on our communication paradigm requires a deconstruction of power and authority in the classroom. It exposes the ways in which faculty expertise in content in a technological environment, that is, being the most skilled and competent computer user in the classroom, negatively informs our understanding of classroom authority and teaching success. It argues that a creative problem-solving process is a more useful measure of successful teaching and calls for flexible pedagogies that focus on community-building while maintaining clear conceptual and theoretical frameworks. This paper also provides a case study of the author's approach to altering classroom authority by examining, for example, such practices as teaching multiple courses concurrently, eliciting student voice, discussing course pedagogy in the classroom, involving students in decision-making about grading and deadlines, giving students peer teaching responsibilities, and focusing on consensus as the classroom decision-making process.

The premise of this article is that learning, like all other creative acts, will flourish in an atmosphere in which the learner is willing to take risks, and it is the task of the instructor to create such an atmosphere for learning. If we accept this view of learning as risk-taking, we can begin to confront the factors that discourage students from taking risks and build a class environment where learning becomes less of a risk, or where the risk-taking in learning becomes valued instead of dreaded. Both of these directions require that instructors develop a trusting relationship with students. When students trust an instructor, they will believe in the instructor's ability to turn any situation into a learning opportunity; they will expect the instructor to value their efforts; they will be willing to take the chances that lead to learning and to view failures as learning opportunities. What, then, might be the characteristics of an instructor who would support student risk-taking?

This paper is an attempt to develop a constructive and substantive conversation about the nature of teaching. I have, in fact, written it in conversation with my colleagues at Alverno College and with others from other colleges and universities. It represents my reflection on the practice of scholarship when shaped by student learning as its ultimate purpose. That reflection is based on my experience at Alverno, where teaching is recognized and rewarded as our primary professional responsibility. In this sense, the ideas in the paper are descriptive. But they also serve as a challenge to faculty to take seriously the unique requirements of scholarly activity that has students learning as its goal.