Download or read book The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Higher Education written by Malcolm Tight and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All those with an interest in higher education and higher education research will find this comprehensive collection of the past two decades' most influential readings on the topic an absolutely essential companion.

Download or read book Grading the College written by Scott M. Gelber and published by Johns Hopkins University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive history of evaluation in American higher education. In Grading the College, Scott M. Gelber offers a comprehensive history of evaluating teaching and learning in higher education. He complicates the conventional narrative that portrays evaluation as a newfangled assault on the integrity of higher education while acknowledging that there are many compelling reasons to oppose those practices. The evaluation of teaching and learning, Gelber argues, presented genuine dilemmas that have attracted the attention of faculty members and academic leaders since the 1920s. Especially during the peak era of faculty authority that followed the end of the Second World War, significant numbers of professors and administrators believed that evaluation might improve institutional performance, reduce the bias inherent in traditional methods of supervision, strengthen communication with laypersons, and encourage a more deliberate focus on the distinctive goals of college. Gelber reveals the extent to which professors and academic interest groups participated in the development of our most common evaluation instruments, including student course questionnaires, achievement tests, surveys, rubrics, rankings, and accreditation self-studies. Although these efforts may seem distant from the present era of shortsighted scrutiny and ill-conceived comparisons, Gelber demonstrates that the evaluation of college teaching and learning has long consisted of a set of intellectually sophisticated questions that have engaged, and could continue to engage, faculty members and their advocates. By providing a deeper understanding of how evaluation operated before the dawn of high-stakes accountability, Grading the College seeks to promote productive conversations about current attempts to define and measure the purposes of American higher education.

Download or read book How Humans Learn written by Joshua Eyler and published by Teaching and Learning in Highe. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even on good days, teaching is a challenging profession. One way to make the job of college instructors easier, however, is to know more about the ways students learn. How Humans Learn aims to do just that by peering behind the curtain and surveying research in fields as diverse as developmental psychology, anthropology, and cognitive neuroscience for insight into the science behind learning. The result is a story that ranges from investigations of the evolutionary record to studies of infants discovering the world for the first time, and from a look into how our brains respond to fear to a reckoning with the importance of gestures and language. Joshua R. Eyler identifies five broad themes running through recent scientific inquiry--curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure--devoting a chapter to each and providing practical takeaways for busy teachers. He also interviews and observes college instructors across the country, placing theoretical insight in dialogue with classroom experience.

Download or read book Improving How Universities Teach Science written by Carl Wieman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-22 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Too many universities remain wedded to outmoded ways of teaching science in spite of extensive research showing that there are much more effective methods. Too few departments ask whether what happens in their lecture halls is effective at helping students to learn and how they can encourage their faculty to teach better. But real change is possible, and Carl Wieman shows us how it can be brought about. Improving How Universities Teach Science draws on Wieman’s unparalleled experience to provide a blueprint for educators seeking sustainable improvements in science teaching. Wieman created the Science Education Initiative (SEI), a program implemented across thirteen science departments at the universities of Colorado and British Columbia, to support the widespread adoption of the best research-based approaches to science teaching. The program’s data show that in the most successful departments 90 percent of faculty adopted better methods. Wieman identifies what factors helped and hindered the adoption of good teaching methods. He also gives detailed, effective, and tested strategies for departments and institutions to measure and improve the quality of their teaching while limiting the demands on faculty time. Among all of the commentary addressing shortcomings in higher education, Wieman’s lessons on improving teaching and learning stand out. His analysis and solutions are not limited to just one lecture hall or course but deal with changing entire departments and universities. For those who want to improve how universities teach science to the next generation, Wieman’s work is a critical first step.

Download or read book The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education An Evidence Based Perspective written by Raymond P. Perry and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-06-04 with total page 815 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pivotal to the transformation of higher education in the 21st Century is the nature of pedagogy and its role in advancing the aims of various stakeholders. This book brings together pre-eminent scholars to critically assess teaching and learning issues that cut across most disciplines. Systematically explored throughout the book is the avowed linkage between classroom teaching and motivation, learning, and performance outcomes in students.

Download or read book Evaluating and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-01-19 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economic, academic, and social forces are causing undergraduate schools to start a fresh examination of teaching effectiveness. Administrators face the complex task of developing equitable, predictable ways to evaluate, encourage, and reward good teaching in science, math, engineering, and technology. Evaluating, and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics offers a vision for systematic evaluation of teaching practices and academic programs, with recommendations to the various stakeholders in higher education about how to achieve change. What is good undergraduate teaching? This book discusses how to evaluate undergraduate teaching of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology and what characterizes effective teaching in these fields. Why has it been difficult for colleges and universities to address the question of teaching effectiveness? The committee explores the implications of differences between the research and teaching cultures-and how practices in rewarding researchers could be transferred to the teaching enterprise. How should administrators approach the evaluation of individual faculty members? And how should evaluation results be used? The committee discusses methodologies, offers practical guidelines, and points out pitfalls. Evaluating, and Improving Undergraduate Teaching in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics provides a blueprint for institutions ready to build effective evaluation programs for teaching in science fields.

Download or read book Evaluating Faculty Performance written by Peter Seldin and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 2006-05-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by experts in teaching and administration, this guide offers practical, research-based information for faculty members and administrators in search of new approaches for assessing and improving faculty potential. By recognizing that faculty evaluation can be a difficult, time-consuming, and costly process, the authors of Evaluating Faculty Performance have distilled existing evaluation practices into useful recommendations for strengthening the overall system. Offering numerous suggestions for improving evaluation methods, assessing program weaknesses, and avoiding common problems, the book Examines compelling reasons for developing effective and systematic faculty assessment processes Discusses how to create a climate for positive change by favoring performance counseling over performance evaluation Identifies the essential elements and best practices in assessment, while also revealing what not to do in evaluating performance Explains the value of the professional portfolio in assessment teaching, and offers advice on how to complete a portfolio Outlines key issues, dangers, and benchmarks for success in straightforward language Included are field-tested forms and checklists that can be used to measure faculty performance in teaching, research, and service. The suggestions for improving faculty assessment are clear and practicable—sensible advice for strengthening a process that is of increasing importance in higher education.

Download or read book Academically Adrift written by Richard Arum and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. A bachelor’s degree is now required for entry into a growing number of professions. And some parents begin planning for the expense of sending their kids to college when they’re born. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s answer to that question is a definitive no. Their extensive research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and, for the first time, the state-of-the-art Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills—including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing—during their first two years of college. As troubling as their findings are, Arum and Roksa argue that for many faculty and administrators they will come as no surprise—instead, they are the expected result of a student body distracted by socializing or working and an institutional culture that puts undergraduate learning close to the bottom of the priority list. Academically Adrift holds sobering lessons for students, faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents—all of whom are implicated in promoting or at least ignoring contemporary campus culture. Higher education faces crises on a number of fronts, but Arum and Roksa’s report that colleges are failing at their most basic mission will demand the attention of us all.

Download or read book A Comprehensive Critique of Student Evaluation of Teaching written by Dennis E. Clayson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-27 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thought-provoking volume offers comprehensive analysis of contemporary research and literature on student evaluation of teaching (SET) in Higher Education. In evaluating data from fields including education, psychology, engineering, science, and business, this volume critically engages with the assumption that SET is a reliable and valid measure of effective teaching. Clayson navigates a range of cultural, social, and era-related factors including gender, grades, personality, student honesty, and halo effects to consider how these may impact on the accuracy and impartiality of student evaluations. Ultimately, he posits a “popularity hypothesis”, asserting that above all, SET measures instructor likability. While controversial, the hypothesis powerfully and persuasively draws on extensive and divergent literature to offer new and salient insights regarding the growing and potentially misleading phenomenon of SET. This topical and transdisciplinary book will be of great interest to researchers, faculty, and administrators in the fields of higher education management, administration, teaching and learning.

Download or read book Implications of Race and Racism in Student Evaluations of Teaching written by LaVada U. Taylor and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Implications of Race and Racism in Student Evaluations of Teaching: The Hate U Give highlights practices in higher education such as using student evaluations of teaching to inform merit increases, contract renewals, and promotion and tenure decisions. The collection deconstructs student course feedback to reveal implications of race and racism inherent in student responses mirroring learned behavior situated within the social-political context of US culture and K12 schools. Learned behavior fostering racial hate given to students informing and shaping classroom experiences with BIPOC faculty. To this end, the work speaks to systemic racial inequity in higher education learning spaces and possibilities of reimagining student evaluations as a cry for a more just and equitable society.

Download or read book Grade Inflation written by Valen E. Johnson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-04-30 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grade inflation runs rampant at most colleges and universities, but faculty and administrators are seemingly unwilling to face the problem. This book explains why, exposing many of the misconceptions surrounding college grading. Based on historical research and the results of a yearlong, on-line course evaluation experiment conducted at Duke University during the 1998-1999 academic year, the effects of student grading on various educational processes, and their subsequent impact on student and faculty behavior, is examined. Principal conclusions of this investigation are that instructors' grading practices have a significant influence on end-of-course teaching evaluations, and that student expectations of grading practices play an important role in the courses that students decide to take. The latter effect has a serious impact on course enrollments in the natural sciences and mathematics, while the combination of both mean that faculty have an incentive to award high grades, and students have an incentive to choose courses with faculty who do. Grade inflation is the natural consequence of this incentive system. Material contained in this book is essential reading for anyone involved in efforts to reform our postsecondary educational system, or for those who simply wish to survive and prosper in it. Valen Johnson is a Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. Prior to accepting an appointment in Ann Arbor, he was a Professor of Statistics and Decision Sciences at Duke University, where data for this book was collected. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association.

Download or read book The Professor Is In written by Karen Kelsky and published by Crown. This book was released on 2015-08-04 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Download or read book Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation written by Peter Seldin and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1984-04-15 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rethinking Teaching in Higher Education written by Alenoush Saroyan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Evaluation and the Academy are We Doing the Right Thing written by Henry Rosovsky and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Science Teaching Reconsidered written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-03-12 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Effective science teaching requires creativity, imagination, and innovation. In light of concerns about American science literacy, scientists and educators have struggled to teach this discipline more effectively. Science Teaching Reconsidered provides undergraduate science educators with a path to understanding students, accommodating their individual differences, and helping them grasp the methodsâ€"and the wonderâ€"of science. What impact does teaching style have? How do I plan a course curriculum? How do I make lectures, classes, and laboratories more effective? How can I tell what students are thinking? Why don't they understand? This handbook provides productive approaches to these and other questions. Written by scientists who are also educators, the handbook offers suggestions for having a greater impact in the classroom and provides resources for further research.

Download or read book An Evidence based Guide to College and University Teaching written by Aaron S. Richmond and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes a good college teacher? This book provides an evidence- based answer to that question by presenting a set of "model teaching characteristics" that define what makes a good college teacher. Based on six fundamental areas of teaching competency known as Model Teaching Characteristics outlined by The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), this book describes how college faculty from all disciplines and at all levels of experience can use these characteristics to evaluate, guide, and improve their teaching. Evidence based research supports the inclusion of each characteristic, each of which is illustrated through example, to help readers master the skills. Readers learn to evaluate their teaching abilities by providing guidance on what to document and how to accumulate and organize the evidence. Two introductory chapters outline the model teaching characteristics followed by six chapters, each devoted to one of the characteristics: training, instructional methods, course content, assessment, syllabus construction, and student evaluations. The book: -Features in each chapter self-evaluation surveys that help readers identify gaps between the model characteristics and their own teaching, case studies that illustrate common teaching problems, discussion questions that encourage critical thinking, and additional readings for further exploration. -Discusses the need to master teaching skills such as collaborative learning, listening, and using technology as well as discipline-specific knowledge. -Advocates for the use of student-learning outcomes to help teachers better evaluate student performance based on their achievement of specific learning goals. -Argues for the development of learning objectives that reflect the core of the discipline‘s theories and applications, strengthen basic liberal arts skills, and infuse ethical and diversity issues. -Discusses how to solicit student feedback and utilize these evaluations to improve teaching. Intended for professional development or teacher training courses offered in masters and doctoral programs in colleges and universities, this book is also an invaluable resource for faculty development centers, college and university administrators, and college teachers of all levels and disciplines, from novice to the most experienced, interested in becoming more effective teachers.