This book will improve the quality of instruction that college students need. It makes numerous suggestions that must be tended to when teachers instruct students. For example, the authors speculate about ways teachers can present what may at times seem to be a mountain of information without burying students under it; why teachers must continually update their Internet skills; and whether courses are taught on campus or online, they should not be academic fluff or pedagogical gimmicks. Throughout the book the authors punctuate sentences and paragraphs with metaphors, similes, hyperboles, and ironies in order to adequately capture a panoramic view of the consonance and dissonance that characterizes effective and ineffective teaching. Scattered throughout the book are suggestions about ways teachers can become more responsive to students. For example, it provides suggestions on how classroom and online teachers can consciously manage sounds, movements, colors, and the other aspects of teaching as though they were like drama, music, ballet, or literature in order to keep students attentive. This is one of the few books that give equal attention to teaching classroom and online courses. Face-to-face teaching is more art than science, so the first part of the book is interpersonally expansive. Online teaching is more technology and science than art. Therefore, the second part of the book is more straightforward, less interpersonal. By reading this book, teachers will find out what will work for him or her, and it provides a lot of interesting information about other teachers, including the authors. Also provided are succinct overviews of several instructional methods, including their theoretical foundations, that can be used independently or together to enhance the education of college students. Many of the topics discussed in one chapter are revisited in later ones. This spiral approach to learning is actually repetition and supplementation for knowledge transfer. The exercises at the end of each chapter serve dual purposes: they are both self-assessments and summaries of selected data. The book will serve as an excellent resource for would-be, new, and experienced teachers as well as professional development staff and librarians.

Quality of teaching has proved to be an elusive construct. This book is based on extensive interviews with 18 truly exemplary teachers at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The book explains and illustrates the principles of excellent teaching that underpin the way these teachers plan and teach their courses. What content, teaching strategies and assessment tasks do they select? What do they actually do in their classrooms? How do they establish and maintain relationships with their students? How do they improve their own practice through evaluation? These principles of excellent teaching apply across all disciplines and, indeed, across the global higher education community. Book jacket.

There has been an explosion of interest in teaching excellence in higher education. Once labelled the ‘poor relation’ of the research/teaching divide, teaching is now firmly on the policy agenda; pressure on institutions to improve the quality of teaching has never been greater and significant funding seeks to promote teaching excellence in higher education institutions. This book constitutes the first serious scrutiny of how and why it should be achieved. International perspectives from educational researchers, award winning teachers, practitioners and educational developers consider key topics, including: policy initiatives research-led teaching teaching excellence and scholarship the significance of academic disciplines research into teaching excellence rewarding through promotion inclusive learning and ICT. Teaching Excellence in Higher Education provides a guide for all those supporting, promoting and trying to achieve teaching excellence in higher education and sets the scene for teaching excellence as a field for serious investigation and critical enquiry.

This book explores disciplinary teaching excellence through a diverse range of student-staff partnership research projects. Despite being a highly contested term, ‘teaching excellence’ is something that universities aspire to and are expected to have. However, the editors and contributors argue that not only are definitions of excellence often broad and generic, but they lack nuanced understandings of disciplinary excellence in higher education. This book begins by unpacking some of these contested definitions of teaching excellence, followed by a series of co-authored chapters produced by students and staff who have undertaken research projects where they examine teaching excellence in their respective disciplinary areas. These chapters demonstrate that teaching excellence may be better understood as a process of becoming that is achieved through partnership between teachers and students. This book will be of interest and value to students, educators, and policy-makers concerned about teaching excellence, as well as scholars of student-staff partnerships.

An in-depth look at Centers for Teaching and Learning and their profound impact on US higher education. Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) are important change agents on campus with strategies that are unique and impactful—but sometimes unarticulated or misaligned. In this wide-ranging book, Mary C. Wright maps the landscape of 1,200+ CTLs in the United States through a unique approach: by conducting complex web searches to identify and categorize CTLs, then examining the wealth of information that is available on these institutions' own websites. The data she uncovers reveal important insights into CTLs' strategies and operations and offer a fuller picture of the impact these centers are making on US higher education as a whole. Drawing from this web-based methodology, as well as interviews with CTL leaders and staff, Wright provides a broad picture of educational development in the United States and examines trends in what CTLs aim to accomplish, key strategies for reaching these goals, programs and services they offer, and their impacts on campuses. She also explores new organizational mandates for CTLs, including ones involving instructional technology and online learning, assessment, writing, service learning and community engagement, and career and leadership development. In response to increased constituency sizes and expanding missions and mandates, she notes, centers are also incorporating new faculty and student engagement structures. Key chapters focus on goals and theories of change, program types and exemplars, organizational structures, assessment and evaluation practices, and emerging trends. Offering guidelines for effective strategic leadership, Centers for Teaching and Learning documents the growth of this important organizational unit in US higher education and explains the role these centers play in supporting operational needs, strategic aims, and organizational change.

** An acclaimed educator presents hands-on advice on teaching that meets today’s emphasis on learning outcomes and assessment** Informed by the most up-to-date research on how people learn** For all instructors in higher education--as well as high school teachersLaurie Richlin has been running a workshop on course design for higher education for over fifteen years, modifying and improving it progressively from the feedback of participants, and from what they in turn have taught her.Her goals are to enable participants to appropriately select teaching strategies, to design and create the conditions and experiences that will enable their students to learn; and in the process to develop the scholarly scaffold to document their ongoing course design and achievements.This book familiarizes readers with course design elements; enables them to understand themselves as individuals and teachers; know their students; adapt to the learning environment; design courses that promote deep learning; and assess the impact of the teaching practices and design choices they have made. She provides tools to create a full syllabus, offers guidance on such issues as framing questions that encourage discussion, developing assignments with rubrics, and creating tests. The book is packed with resources that will help readers structure their courses and constitute a rich reference of proven ideas.What Laurie Richlin offers is a intellectual framework, set of tools and best practices to enable readers to design and continually reassess their courses to better meet their teaching goals and the learning needs of their students.

Teaching excellence in higher education needs to be promoted and celebrated. However, a universal definition of excellent teaching remains elusive, and robust evidence about how it affects student learning appears to be lacking. This timely book explores the notion of teaching excellence from the viewpoint of a variety of international authors; guiding the reader to understand the complex terrain in which teaching excellence is foregrounded, and highlighting a number of key issues facing the future of global higher education. Global Perspectives on Teaching Excellence explores: what is meant by teaching excellence, whether it can be measured and if so, how? the impact of teaching excellence frameworks, initiatives and awards. the new challenges for delivering global teaching excellence fit for the 21st century. With a mix of political, theoretical and applied research foci, each chapter also includes a short critical commentary from international experts in the field to further the debate and situate the topics in a wider context. Global Perspectives on Teaching Excellence is essential reading for academic and education policymakers, researchers, and undergraduate and postgraduate students in education.

This practical and authoritative handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the issues and approaches to assuring quality in university teaching. Including contributions from major international figures, the book contains a wealth of ideas and practical advice to help universities commit to quality in teaching and offers insights into how the topics raised can be directly applied. The book initially identifies some of the key issues surrounding the topic, such as the evidence-based identification of teaching quality; the training of university lecturers and faculty; external and internal quality assurance; the tension between professional autonomy and governmental regulation; and the involvement of students in developing quality. It then moves on to present ideas and initiatives to address these problems, tackling the subject through four sections: Assuring Quality – questioning what quality assurance means and how it might be practised; Identifying Quality – examining what knowledge exists at present and how it might be further researched; Developing Quality – investigating the development of staff through teacher training and appraisal; Case Studies of Quality Assurance – reviewing six case studies of quality assurance in a range of contrasting subjects including the professional subjects of Medicine, Nursing and Teacher Training which are also addressed systemically in the first section. Full of practical advice, Handbook of Quality Assurance for University Teaching is an invaluable and unique resource for Faculty, Subject Leaders, University Administrators and Quality Assessors.

Teaching for Learning is a comprehensive, practical resource for instructors that highlights and synthesizes proven teaching methods and active learning strategies. Each of the 101 entries describes an approach and lists its essential features and elements, demonstrates how the approach may be used in various educational contexts, reviews findings from the research literature, and describes techniques to improve effectiveness. Fully revised and updated to reflect the latest research and innovations in the field, this second edition also features critical new content on adapting techniques for use in online courses.