Faculty Development: Student Engagement

This companion to Qualities of Effective Teachers provides strategies for examining the practice of teaching, helping teachers improve their skills, and establishing an environment that supports good teaching.

Web 2.0 and blended learning technologies are reshaping and reframing the practice of teaching and learning in higher education. This volume critically examines new research on how e-learning technologies are being used in higher education to increase learner engagement and retention.

It is now widely accepted that institutional change is necessary to engage a diverse student body, both to encourage them to enter higher education (HE), and to enable them to be successful in HE. This book is premised on the need for institutional transformation: changing institutional structures, processes and governance; developing an inclusive culture and altering processes of knowledge creation (research) and knowledge transfer (learning and teaching). Key features of the book include: • Developing the concept of institutional transformation and student engagement to widen participation in HE and improve student retention and success; • Providing an analysis of how well institutions in England are doing in terms of taking a whole institution approach to widening participation, student diversity and success. • Exploring the meaning of institutional transformation in relation to: outreach, admissions, induction and transition, learning and teaching, personal tutoring and support, research and progression beyond HE • Identifying approaches to managing institutional transformation • Involving students in the process of transformation • Illustrating and developing these themes through a serious of mini international case studies. The book aims to help readers engage with a number of the core higher education issues that have dominated UK and International policy over recent years.

Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher education does. To truly effect change, the curriculum needs to be examined and aligned with learner-centered practices. In this book the authors offer both design specifications for a learner-centered approach to curriculum as well as practical recommendations for implementation and assessment. The book covers the need for redesigning curriculum, curriculum design in the instructional paradigm, learner-centered design in practice, implementation, program assessment (including a helpful rubric for this), innovating through technology, and learning spaces that support learner-centered curricula.

Before entering higher education, most students' learning experiences have been traditional and teacher-centered. Their teachers have typically controlled their learning, with students having had little say about what and how to learn. For many students, encountering a learner-centered environment will be new, possibly unsettling, and may even engender resistance and hostility. Taking as his starting point students' attitudes toward, and unfamiliarity with, learner-centered classrooms, Terry Doyle explains that motivating students to engage with this practice first of all requires explaining its underlying rationale, and then providing guidance on how to learn in this environment. This book is about how to help students acquire the new skills and knowledge they need to take on unfamiliar roles and responsibilities.

This practical handbook for designing and teaching hybrid or blended courses focuses on outcomes-based practice. It reflects the author's experience of having taught over 70 hybrid courses, and having worked for three years in the Learning Technology Center at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a center that is recognized as a leader in the field of hybrid course design. Jay Caulfield defines hybrid courses as ones where not only is face time replaced to varying degrees by online learning, but also by experiential learning that takes place in the community or within an organization with or without the presence of a teacher; and as a pedagogy that places the primary responsibility of learning on the learner, with the teacher's primary role being to create opportunities and environments that foster independent and collaborative student learning. Starting with a brief review of the relevant theory - such as andragogy, inquiry-based learning, experiential learning and theories that specifically relate to distance education - she addresses the practicalities of planning a hybrid course, taking into account class characteristics such as size, demographics, subject matter, learning outcomes, and time available. She offers criteria for determining the appropriate mix of face-to-face, online, and experiential components for a course, and guidance on creating social presence online. The section on designing and teaching in the hybrid environment covers such key elements as promoting and managing discussion, using small groups, creating opportunities for student feedback, and ensuring that students' learning expectations are met. A concluding section of interviews with students and teachers offers a rich vein of tips and ideas.