Books in the Center for Teaching and Learning collection are available for checkout in Dugan Library or as eBooks. Click the title links on items to see their availability.
Academia Next
by
From the renowned futurist, a look at how current trends will transform American higher education over the next twenty years. 2020 Most Significant Futures Work Award Winner, Association of Professional Futurists The outlook for the future of colleges and universities is uncertain. Financial stresses, changing student populations, and rapidly developing technologies all pose significant challenges to the nation's colleges and universities. In Academia Next, futurist and higher education expert Bryan Alexander addresses these evolving trends to better understand higher education's next generation. Alexander first examines current economic, demographic, political, international, and policy developments as they relate to higher education. He also explores internal transformations within postsecondary institutions, including those related to enrollment, access, academic labor, alternative certification, sexual assault, and the changing library, paying particularly close attention to technological changes. Alexander then looks beyond these trends to offer a series of distinct scenarios and practical responses for institutions to consider when combating shrinking enrollments, reduced public support, and the proliferation of technological options. Arguing that the forces he highlights are not speculative but are already in play, Alexander draws on a rich, extensive, and socially engaged body of research to best determine their likeliest outcomes. It is only by taking these trends seriously, he writes, that colleges and universities can improve their chances of survival and growth. An unusually multifaceted approach to American higher education that views institutions as complex organisms, Academia Next offers a fresh perspective on the emerging colleges and universities of today and tomorrow.
Assessment Essentials
by
This is a one-volume Assessment 101....A comprehensive, useful introduction for novices and a valuable review and update for veterans. --Thomas A. Angelo, associate professor and director, The Assessment Center, School for New Learning, DePaul University This step-by-step guide provides the most current practices for developing assessment programs on college and university campuses. Assessment Essentials outlines the assessment process from the first to the last step and is filled with illustrative examples to show how assessment is accomplished on today's academic campuses. It is especially useful for faculty members and others who may be new to the assessment process. In clear, accessible language, Palomba and Banta describe effective assessment programs and offer a thorough review of the most up-to-date practices in the field. Each chapter of the book addresses a specific aspect of assessment and is designed to walk users through various steps of the assessment process. This comprehensive resource shows how to: * Develop plans and goals that are right for the needs of an individual campus * Encourage involvement and support from students, faculty, alumni, and employees * Select useful methods and approaches * Use the most advantageous performance measures * Develop tests and classroom assignments * Choose appropriate surveys and focus groups * Accurately assess general education, campus environments, and student experiences * Effectively analyze, report, and use the assessment results
Collaborative Learning
by
In Collaborative Learning, Kenneth Bruffee advocates a far-reaching change in the relations we assume between college and university professors and their students, between the learned and the learning. He argues that the nature and source of the authority of college and university professors is the central issue in college and university education in our time, and that if college and university professors continue to teach exclusively in the stand-up-and-tell-'em way, their students will miss the opportunity to learn mature, effective interdependence--and this, Bruffee maintains, is the most important lesson we should expect students to learn. The book makes three related points. First, we should begin thinking about colleges and universities, and they should begin thinking about themselves, not as stores of information but as institutions of reacculturation. Second, we should think of college and university professors not as purveyors of information but as agents of cultural change who foster reacculturation by marshaling interdependence among student pers. And third, colleges and universities should revise longstanding assumptions about the nature and authority of knowledge and about classroom authority. To accomplish this, the author maintains, both college students and their professors must learn collaboratively. Describing the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach--students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers, and helping each other with editing and revision--Bruffee concludes that, in the short run, collaborative learning helps students learn better--more thoroughly, more deeply, more efficiently--than learning alone. In the long run, collaborative learning is the best possible preparation for the real world, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence, and construct knowledge in the very way that academic disciplines and the professions do. With no loss of respect for the value of expertise, students learn to depend on one another rather than depending exclusively on the authority of experts and teachers. In the second edition of this widely respected work, the argument is sharply focused on the need to change college and university education top to bottom, and the need to understand knowledge differently in order to accomplish that change. Several chapters, including that on collaborative learning and computers, have been thoroughly revised, and three new chapters have been added: on differences between collaborative learning and cooperative learning; on literary study and teaching literature; and on postgraduate education. From Collaborative Learning, second edition: On the curriculum: Behind every public debate about college curriculum today lie comfortably unchallenged traditional assumptions. When we become fully aware of how deeply and irremediably these traditional assumptions have been challenged by twentieth-century thought, we see that a potentially more serious, and perhaps more rancorous and divisive, educational debate On the social construction of knowledge: Remember the time Aunty Molly sat on the Thanksgiving turkey? Tell such a story at a family party and family members follow the story easily and get the point, because they are all members of the same small knowledge community. They know the people and the situation thoroughly, and they understand the family's private references. But try to tell the same story to neighbors or colleagues. For them to follow the story and get the point, you have to explain a lot of obscure details about family events and personalities that they're not familiar with. That is, when a smaller community sets out to integrate itself into a larger one, the level of discourse has to change. The story changes and even its meaning changes as it becomes a constituting narrative of a larger and more
Critical Teaching Behaviors
by
What does "good" teaching mean, and how can we know it when we see it? Perhaps you have grappled with these questions at some point in your career, either as an instructor wanting to document or grow your teaching effectiveness or as a peer or administrator trying to provide guidance to or assess the teaching of others. This book serves three purposes: a condensed, evidence-based guide to effective teaching; a resource on creating a focused teaching narrative and teaching portfolio; and a toolkit that equips faculty to conduct peer observations, student midterm feedback, and productive conversations related to teaching. The first part of the book offers a rich guide as to what constitutes effective teaching based on a comprehensive review of the research on instructional strategies and behaviors that promote student engagement, learning, and success. It includes practical advice flexible enough to accommodate disciplinary and contextual differences, recognizing that readers will want to adapt effective behaviors based on their values and dispositions. The opening chapters successively cover aligning classroom activities to learning goals; teaching inclusively to account for students' prior learning and diversity; creating an environment that promotes students' active engagement in learning and taking responsibility for their intellectual development; assessing students' progress and adjusting teaching accordingly; using technology effectively; and finally engaging in reflective self-assessment with feedback from peers and students to adjust and develop teaching skills. In the second part of the book, the authors offer structured guidance on developing a focused teaching narrative, gathering peer and student feedback to support that narrative, and curating a portfolio to showcase exemplary practices and achievements. The insights and tools presented also equip readers to facilitate classroom peer observations and gather midterm student feedback. Overall, the second part of the book provides readers with a common language and tools to use when discussing teaching with peers and those who may formally or informally observe their teaching. The book builds to providing the reader with a clear sense of the criteria and evidence needed to document their teaching for the purposes of annual review, promotion, or tenure. The now widely recognized Critical Teaching Behaviors (CTB) framework offers a holistic means of documenting and assessing teaching effectiveness by including a variety of evidence and perspectives. The comprehensive feedback and documentation toolkit aligned to the framework incorporates more of the instructor's perspective on their own teaching into the evaluation process and substitutes for or supplements student evaluations of teaching (SETs). Administrators will also find the CTB useful as a template and guide for the objective evaluation of teaching. In a single volume, this book offers faculty evidence-based guidance and encouragement to explore effective teaching strategies whether they are just embarking on their college teaching journey or are experienced instructors looking to explore new ideas. The CTB presents instructors a roadmap to both developing teaching skills and demonstrating achievements in promoting student learning to advance their careers. It is designed to be an interactive workbook. While readers can choose to read passively, they will get the most value from this book by completing the prompts and activities along the way.
Effective Grading
by
Effective Grading is written for the faculty member who believes the grading process is a valuable measure of student learning. This hands-on guide for evaluating student work offers an in-depth examination of the linkage between teaching and grading. It uses grades not as isolated artifacts, but as part of a process that, when integrated with course objectives, provides rich information about student learning. The authors reveal how the grading process can also be used for broader assessment objectives, such as curriculum and institutional assessment. As practical as it is informative, Effective Grading contains a wealth of special materials, including AAHE's Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning, types of assignments and tests, and a plan for a faculty workshop on grading and assessment. In addition, the book provides background to the principles of the grading process as well as a wealth of illustrative examples, offering faculty both a sound basis in assessment theory and the practical tools they need to put it to work.
Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Guide to the Process, and How to Develop a Project from Start to Finish
by
This is a book for anyone who has ever considered engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning – known familiarly as SoTL – and needs a better understanding of what it is, and how to engage in it. The authors describe how to create a SoTL project, its implications for promotion and tenure, and how it fosters:* Increased satisfaction and fulfillment in teaching* Improved student learning* Increased productivity of scholarly publication* Collaboration with colleagues across disciplines* Contributing to a growing and important body of literatureThis guide provides prospective SoTL scholars with the necessary background information, foundational theory, tools, resources, and methodology to develop their own SoTL projects, taking the reader through the five stages of the process: Generating a research question; Designing the study; Collecting the data; Analyzing the data; and Presenting and publishing your SoTL project. Each stage is illustrated by examples of actual SoTL studies, and is accompanied by worksheets to help the reader refine ideas and map out his or her next steps. The process and worksheets are the fruit of the successful SoTL workshops the authors have offered at their institution for many years. SoTL differs from scholarly and reflective teaching in that it not only involves questioning one’s teaching or a teaching strategy, but also formally gathering and exploring evidence, researching the literature, refining and testing practices, and finally going public. The purpose of SoTL is not just to make an impact on student learning, but through formal, peer-reviewed communication, to contribute to the larger knowledge base on teaching and learning. While the roots of SoTL go back some 30 years, it was Ernest Boyer in his classic Scholarship Reconsidered who made the case for the parity of the scholarships of integration, of discovery, of application, and of scholarship of teaching as vital to the health of higher education. Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff ’s subsequent Scholarship Assessed articulated the quality standards for SoTL, since when the field has burgeoned with the formation of related associations, a proliferation of conferences, the launching of numerous journals, and increasing recognition and validation by institutions.
Faculty Development in the Age of Evidence
by
The first decade of the 21st century brought major challenges to higher education, all of which have implications for and impact the future of faculty professional development. This volume provides the field with an important snapshot of faculty development structures, priorities and practices in a period of change, and uses the collective wisdom of those engaged with teaching, learning, and faculty development centers and programs to identify important new directions for practice. Building on their previous study of a decade ago, published under the title of Creating the Future of Faculty Development, the authors explore questions of professional preparation and pathways, programmatic priorities, collaboration, and assessment. Since the publication of this earlier study, the pressures on faculty development have only escalated--demands for greater accountability from regional and disciplinary accreditors, fiscal constraints, increasing diversity in types of faculty appointments, and expansion of new technologies for research and teaching. Centers have been asked to address a wider range of institutional issues and priorities based on these challenges. How have they responded and what strategies should centers be considering? These are the questions this book addresses.For this new study the authors re-surveyed faculty developers on perceived priorities for the field as well as practices and services offered. They also examined more deeply than the earlier study the organization of faculty development, including characteristics of directors; operating budgets and staffing levels of centers; and patterns of collaboration, re-organization and consolidation. In doing so they elicited information on centers' "signature programs," and the ways that they assess the impact of their programs on teaching and learning and other key outcomes. What emerges from the findings are what the authors term a new Age of Evidence, influenced by heightened stakeholder interest in the outcomes of undergraduate education and characterized by a focus on assessing the impact of instruction on student learning, of academic programs on student success, and of faculty development in institutional mission priorities. Faculty developers are responding to institutional needs for assessment, at the same time as they are being asked to address a wider range of institutional priorities in areas such as blended and online teaching, diversity, and the scale-up of evidence-based practices. They face the need to broaden their audiences, and address the needs of part-time, non-tenure-track, and graduate student instructors as well as of pre-tenure and post-tenure faculty. They are also feeling increased pressure to demonstrate the "return on investment" of their programs.This book describes how these faculty development and institutional needs and priorities are being addressed through linkages, collaborations, and networks across institutional units; and highlights the increasing role of faculty development professionals as organizational "change agents" at the department and institutional levels, serving as experts on the needs of faculty in larger organizational discussions.
The Power of Problem-Based Learning
by
Problem-based learning is a powerful classroom process, which uses real world problems to motivate students to identify and apply research concepts and information, work collaboratively and communicate effectively. It is a strategy that promotes life-long habits of learning. The University of Delaware is recognized internationally as a center of excellence in the use and development of PBL. This book presents the cumulative knowledge and practical experience acquired over nearly a decade of integrating PBL in courses in a wide range of disciplines. This "how to" book for college and university faculty. It focuses on the practical questions which anyone wishing to embark on PBL will want to know: "Where do I start?"-"How do you find problems?"-"What do I need to know about managing groups?"-"How do you grade in a PBL course?" The book opens by outlining how the PBL program was developed at the University of Delaware--covering such issues as faculty mentoring and institutional support--to offer a model for implementation for other institutions. The authors then address the practical questions involved in course transformation and planning for effective problem-based instruction, including writing problems, using the Internet, strategies for using groups, the use of peer tutors and assessment. They conclude with case studies from a variety of disciplines, including biochemistry, pre-law, physics, nursing, chemistry, political science and teacher education This introduction for faculty, department chairs and faculty developers will assist them to successfully harness this powerful process to improve learning outcomes.
Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone
by
Advocates for the rights of people with disabilities have worked hard to make universal design in the built environment "just part of what we do." We no longer see curb cuts, for instance, as accommodations for people with disabilities, but perceive their usefulness every time we ride our bikes or push our strollers through crosswalks. This is also a perfect model for Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework grounded in the neuroscience of why, what, and how people learn. Tobin and Behling show that, although it is often associated with students with disabilities, UDL can be profitably broadened toward a larger ease-of-use and general diversity framework. Captioned instructional videos, for example, benefit learners with hearing impairments but also the student who worries about waking her young children at night or those studying on a noisy team bus. Reach Everyone, Teach Everyone is aimed at faculty members, faculty-service staff, disability support providers, student-service staff, campus leaders, and graduate students who want to strengthen the engagement, interaction, and performance of all college students. It includes resources for readers who want to become UDL experts and advocates: real-world case studies, active-learning techniques, UDL coaching skills, micro- and macro-level UDL-adoption guidance, and use-them-now resources.
Rethinking Teaching in Higher Education
by
This book is intended for faculty and faculty developers, as well as for deans, chairs, and directors responsible for promoting teaching and learning in higher education. Intentionally non-technical, it engages readers reflectively with a process for developing teaching and details the planning necessary to apply this process to teaching within disciplines. The book centers on McGill University's week-long Course Design and Teaching Workshop that the contributors have offered together for more than ten years. It follows the five day format of the workshop-covering the analysis of course content, conceptions of learning, the selection of appropriate teaching strategies, the evaluation of student learning, and evaluation of teaching-in a way that reflects the spontaneity of the debates it has engendered and the workshop's evolutionary changes. The structure shows faculty members conceptualizing new courses or re-examining their teaching of existing courses, and translating the insights gained from the workshop to specific disciplinary content and learning outcomes. In addition four previous participants of the workshop write about its influence on their personal thinking about the practice of teaching. The final two chapters describe the structure and evolving role of McGill's Centre for University Teaching and Learning. The authors describe its objectives in fostering an evidence-based teaching culture and providing a practical support structure with limited resources. They highlight achievements in disseminating teaching expertise across their campus, and their vision for the future role of faculty development. This book provides faculty developers and administrators with valuable non-prescriptive models and challenging ideas that promote faculty development in general and university teaching in particular. It engages faculty members in the process of course design in a way that is learning centered and can lead to deep student learning.
Small Teaching
by
Employ cognitive theory in the classroom every day Research into how we learn has opened the door for utilizing cognitive theory to facilitate better student learning. But that's easier said than done. Many books about cognitive theory introduce radical but impractical theories, failing to make the connection to the classroom. In Small Teaching, James Lang presents a strategy for improving student learning with a series of modest but powerful changes that make a big difference--many of which can be put into practice in a single class period. These strategies are designed to bridge the chasm between primary research and the classroom environment in a way that can be implemented by any faculty in any discipline, and even integrated into pre-existing teaching techniques. Learn, for example: How does one become good at retrieving knowledge from memory? How does making predictions now help us learn in the future? How do instructors instill fixed or growth mindsets in their students? Each chapter introduces a basic concept in cognitive theory, explains when and how it should be employed, and provides firm examples of how the intervention has been or could be used in a variety of disciplines. Small teaching techniques include brief classroom or online learning activities, one-time interventions, and small modifications in course design or communication with students.
Taking Flight
by
Taking Flight synthesizes research on best practices for running centers of teaching and learning, providing practical guidance and resources for educational developers who are looking to open new centers; revitalize an underperforming center; or sustain and enhance an effective center. The authors offer the necessary background, relevant examples, and practical exercises specifically designed to support the sustained vitality of educational development and its role in fostering organizational change. The book is practical in nature, with step sheets, diagrams, and similar materials designed to facilitate reflection and application. The book guides educational developers in enhancing and applying their knowledge, skills and abilities to establish a leadership role which, in turn, will enable them to play a pivotal role in translating visionary strategies into meaningful actions across their respective campuses. An effective, well-managed center for teaching and learning has the potential to benefit its institution's faculty, staff, students, and community members. Through fostering a productive relationship with campus administration, centers can improve morale, contribute to shaping and achieving institutional learning mission and outcomes, enhance institutional reputation, and make a contribution to the practice of teaching and learning across the academy. The materials in Taking Flight were honed through a series of national workshops developed under the aegis of the POD Network - the professional organization for educational developers in the United States. This book answers a need for a resource for directors and staff of centers that has been identified by leaders in the field. It also provides valuable context for all leaders concerned about student learning and the improvement of teaching.
Teaching What You Don't Know
by
Your graduate work was on bacterial evolution, but now you're lecturing to 200 freshmen on primate social life. You've taught Kant for twenty years, but now you're team-teaching a new course on âeoeEthics and the Internet.âe#157; The personality theorist retired and wasn't replaced, so now you, the neuroscientist, have to teach the "Sexual Identity" course. Everyone in academia knows it and no one likes to admit it: faculty often have to teach courses in areas they don't know very well. The challenges are even greater when students don't share your cultural background, lifestyle, or assumptions about how to behave in a classroom. In this practical and funny book, an experienced teaching consultant offers many creative strategies for dealing with typical problems. How can you prepare most efficiently for a new course in a new area? How do you look credible? And what do you do when you don't have a clue how to answer a question? Encouraging faculty to think of themselves as learners rather than as experts, Therese Huston points out that authority in the classroom doesn't come only, or even mostly, from perfect knowledge. She offers tips for introducing new topics in a lively style, for gauging students' understanding, for reaching unresponsive students, for maintaining discussions when they seem to stop dead, and -yes- for dealing with those impossible questions. Original, useful, and hopeful, this book reminds you that teaching what you don't know, to students whom you may not understand, is not just a job. It's an adventure.
Teaching with AI
by
How AI is revolutionizing the future of learning and how educators can adapt to this new era of human thinking. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way we learn, work, and think. Its integration into classrooms and workplaces is already underway, impacting and challenging ideas about creativity, authorship, and education. In this groundbreaking and practical guide, teachers will discover how to harness and manage AI as a powerful teaching tool. José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson present emerging and powerful research on the seismic changes AI is already creating in schools and the workplace, providing invaluable insights into what AI can accomplish in the classroom and beyond. By learning how to use new AI tools and resources, educators will gain the confidence to navigate the challenges and seize the opportunities presented by AI. From interactive learning techniques to advanced assignment and assessment strategies, this comprehensive guide offers practical suggestions for integrating AI effectively into teaching and learning environments. Bowen and Watson tackle crucial questions related to academic integrity, cheating, and other emerging issues. In the age of AI, critical thinking skills, information literacy, and a liberal arts education are more important than ever. As AI continues to reshape the nature of work and human thinking, educators can equip students with the skills they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving world. This book serves as a compass, guiding educators through the uncharted territory of AI-powered education and the future of teaching and learning.
Teaching Naked Techniques
by
Put Teaching Naked to work in your classroom with clear examples and step-by-step guidance Teaching Naked Techniques (TNT) is a practical guide of proven quick ideas for improving classes and essential information for designing anything from one lesson or a group of lessons to an entire course. TNT is both a design guide and a 'sourcebook' of ideas: a great companion to the award-winning Teaching Naked book. Teaching Naked Techniques helps higher education faculty design more effective and engaging classrooms. The book focuses on each step of class preparation from the entry point and first encounter with content to the classroom 'surprise.' There is a chapter on each step in the cycle with an abundance of discipline-specific examples, plus the latest research on cognition and technology, quick lists of ideas, and additional resources. By rethinking the how, when, and why of technology, faculty are able to create exponentially more opportunities for practical student engagement. Student-centered, activity-driven, and proven again and again, these techniques can revolutionize your classroom. Create more effective, engaging lessons for higher education Utilize technology outside of the classroom to better engage during class time Examine discipline-specific examples of Teaching Naked Techniques Prepare for each class step by step from the student's perspective Teaching Naked flips the classroom by placing the student's first contact with the material outside of class. This places the burden of learning on the learner, ensures student preparation, and frees up class time for active engagement with the material for more effective learning and retention. Teaching Naked Techniques is the practical guide for bringing better learning to your classroom.
Teach Students How to Learn
by
Co-published with and Miriam, a freshman Calculus student at Louisiana State University, made 37.5% on her first exam but 83% and 93% on the next two. Matt, a first year General Chemistry student at the University of Utah, scored 65% and 55% on his first two exams and 95% on his third--These are representative of thousands of students who decisively improved their grades by acting on the advice described in this book.What is preventing your students from performing according to expectations? Saundra McGuire offers a simple but profound answer: If you teach students how to learn and give them simple, straightforward strategies to use, they can significantly increase their learning and performance. For over a decade Saundra McGuire has been acclaimed for her presentations and workshops on metacognition and student learning because the tools and strategies she shares have enabled faculty to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success. This book encapsulates the model and ideas she has developed in the past fifteen years, ideas that are being adopted by an increasing number of faculty with considerable effect.The methods she proposes do not require restructuring courses or an inordinate amount of time to teach. They can often be accomplished in a single session, transforming students from memorizers and regurgitators to students who begin to think critically and take responsibility for their own learning. Saundra McGuire takes the reader sequentially through the ideas and strategies that students need to understand and implement. First, she demonstrates how introducing students to metacognition and Bloom's Taxonomy reveals to them the importance of understanding how they learn and provides the lens through which they can view learning activities and measure their intellectual growth. Next, she presents a specific study system that can quickly empower students to maximize their learning. Then, she addresses the importance of dealing with emotion, attitudes, and motivation by suggesting ways to change students' mindsets about ability and by providing a range of strategies to boost motivation and learning; finally, she offers guidance to faculty on partnering with campus learning centers.She pays particular attention to academically unprepared students, noting that the strategies she offers for this particular population are equally beneficial for all students. While stressing that there are many ways to teach effectively, and that readers can be flexible in picking and choosing among the strategies she presents, Saundra McGuire offers the reader a step-by-step process for delivering the key messages of the book to students in as little as 50 minutes. Free online supplements provide three slide sets and a sample video lecture.This book is written primarily for faculty but will be equally useful for TAs, tutors, and learning center professionals. For readers with no background in education or cognitive psychology, the book avoids jargon and esoteric theory.
Teach Yourself How to Learn
by
Following up on her acclaimed Teach Students How to Learn, that describes teaching strategies to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success, Saundra McGuire here presents these "secrets" direct to students. Her message is that "Any student can use simple, straightforward strategies to start making A's in their courses and enjoy a lifetime of deep, effective learning." Beginning with explaining how expectations about learning, and the study efforts required, differ between college and secondary school, the author introduces her readers, through the concept of metacognition, to the importance and powerful consequences of understanding themselves as learners. This framework and the recommended strategies that support it are useful for anyone moving on to a more advanced stage of education, so this book also has an intended audience of students preparing to go to high school, graduate school, or professional school. In a conversational tone, and liberally illustrated by anecdotes of past students, the author combines introducing readers to concepts like Bloom's Taxonomy (to illuminate the difference between studying and learning), fixed and growth mindsets, as well as to what brain science has to tell us about rest, nutrition and exercise, together with such highly specific learning strategies as how to read a textbook, manage their time and take tests. With engaging exercises and thought-provoking reflections, this book is an ideal motivational and practical text for study skills and first year experience courses.
Understanding by Design
by
What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.
What the Best College Teachers Do
by
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is--it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out--but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students' discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.
What Inclusive Instructors Do
by
Inclusive instruction is teaching that recognizes and affirms a student's social identity as an important influence on teaching and learning processes, and that works to create an environment in which students are able to learn from the course, their peers, and the teacher while still being their authentic selves. It works to disrupt traditional notions of who succeeds in the classroom and the systemic inequities inherent in traditional educational practices.--Full-time Academic Professional, Doctorate-granting University, EducationThis book uniquely offers the distilled wisdom of scores of instructors across ranks, disciplines and institution types, whose contributions are organized into a thematic framework that progressively introduces the reader to the key dispositions, principles and practices for creating the inclusive classroom environments (in person and online) that will help their students succeed. The authors asked the hundreds of instructors whom they surveyed as part of a national study to define what inclusive teaching meant to them and what inclusive teaching approaches they implemented in their courses. The instructors' voices ring loudly as the authors draw on their responses, building on their experiences and expertise to frame the conversation about what inclusive teachers do. The authors in addition describe their own insights and practices, integrating and discussing current literature relevant to inclusive teaching to ensure a research-supported approach.Inclusive teaching is no longer an option but a vital teaching competency as our classrooms fill with racially diverse, first generation, and low income and working class students who need a sense of belonging and recognition to thrive and contribute to the construction of knowledge.The book unfolds as an informal journey that allows the reader to see into other teachers' practices. With questions for reflection embedded throughout the book, the authors provide the reader with an inviting and thoughtful guide to develop their own inclusive teaching practices.By utilizing the concepts and principles in this book readers will be able to take steps to transform their courses into spaces that are equitable and welcoming, and adopt practical strategies to address the various inclusion issues that can arise.The book will also appeal to educational developers and staff who support instructors in their inclusive teaching efforts. It should find a place in reflective workshops, book clubs and learning communities exploring this important topic.
