Resources
How to extract "big picture" open-ended discussion questions (what Understanding by Design calls "Essential Questions") from one's stated learning goals, and to embed them into the syllabus and the course activities.
Grant Wiggins, one of the developers of "Understanding by Design," proposes standards for course design and offers "prompts" toward a purposefully-designed course. Part of a series of blog posts on the topic.
Info page, with files and web links, on Understanding by Design, and approach to "backward course design" developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe.
Adjunctification as an "education problem." Addresses the fact that academia and the media continue to promote the myth of "an academy that doesn't exist," in which tenure-track is still the norm. Looks at steps schools ought to take to help adjunct instructors accomplish their teaching.
This in an "info" piece on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and its provisions regarding part-time college instructors, including not only health insurance matters, but those relating to workload definitions.
The Journal of Online Teaching and Learning (JoLT) publishes the detailed results of a study. Briefly: student outcomes are better across the board when taught by FT faculty over adjunct faculty.
The MLA recommendations for departments concerning the treatment of non-tenure-track faculty members. The URL includes a link to a PDF entitled "PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT PRACTICES FOR NON-TENURE-TRACK FACULTY MEMBERS: RECOMMENDATIONS AND EVALUATIVE QUESTIONS".
The Coalition on the Academic Workforce seeks to "address issues associated with deteriorating faculty working conditions and their effect on college and university students in the United States." This URL links to a large-scale survey of part-time and "contingent" faculty members, conducted in 2010 and published in 2012.
This piece concerns "public work" in the sense of student assignments taking place outside the classroom or a closed Learning Management System. It is in the form of a Storify of a Twitter chat that took place March 26, 2012.
Baker offers four (4) strategies for being a public intellectual in one's field: Embrace mass media; imrove your communication style; resist the urge to dumb down the message; keep communication channels open.