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2008

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Articles 661 - 690 of 732

Full-Text Articles in Higher Education Administration

The American Musical As An Honors Course: Obstacles And Possibilities, Mara Parker Jan 2008

The American Musical As An Honors Course: Obstacles And Possibilities, Mara Parker

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Music courses are often problematic for the general undergraduate student as they focus on abstract concepts, employ a specialized vocabulary, and examine compositions not part of most people’s everyday listening repertoire. Many will acknowledge that while they enjoy listening to music, their background and experiences are limited and steeped in the familiar. Appreciation is based on personal taste and often fails to consider historical context, structural components, and stylistic trends. Despite these obstacles, it is possible to construct a meaningful and challenging course for students, regardless of their major, as long as one is willing to use music not as …

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Honored To Be A Part Of Service-Learning, Patricia Powell Jan 2008

Honored To Be A Part Of Service-Learning, Patricia Powell

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What do an adolescent self-esteem workshop for African-American girls, a food and clothing pantry, a Young Authors event in Montego Bay, Jamaica, an HIV/AIDS awareness brochure for a Chicago health-care facility, an after-school program for low income students, and an international student awareness survey have in common? Each started as an idea born of a personal passion and then grew into a semester-long service-learning project for six honors students at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois.

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Wholly Spirit: Searching For A Plausible God By C. Grey Austin, Sam Schuman Jan 2008

Wholly Spirit: Searching For A Plausible God By C. Grey Austin, Sam Schuman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Long before NCHC had a paid, professional staff, Grey Austin was one of a small group of legendary executive secretary/treasurers (along with Jean Philips, John Portz, Lothar Tresp, Bill Mech, and Earl Brown, Jr.) who kept our organization functional and solvent. He served in that capacity in the 1970s and was also the president of our organization early in the following decade. Those of us in honors “of a certain age” recall Grey as a thoughtful, quiet, gentle, skilled leader and manager. Some of us, too, will never forget his characterization of honors leadership: being an honors director, he said, …

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The Senior Honors Thesis: From Millstone To Capstone, Jim Lacey Jan 2008

The Senior Honors Thesis: From Millstone To Capstone, Jim Lacey

Honors in Practice Online Archive

When I became director of a small college honors program, many students perceived the senior honors thesis to be a millstone. Even worse, the word was being bruited about that students didn’t really have to complete the thesis, that the only penalty was not being listed in the separate section for honors scholars in the graduation program. Although the discussion below is about redeeming the thesis process in a small program, some of the strategies should be applicable to large programs as well.

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The Newest “Basic Characteristic” Of A Fully Developed Honors Program, Robert Spurrier Jan 2008

The Newest “Basic Characteristic” Of A Fully Developed Honors Program, Robert Spurrier

Honors in Practice Online Archive

After years of conversations about the sixteen “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” (adopted in 1994), NCHC has added a new Basic Characteristic to the arsenal of the honors dean, director, or coordinator seeking to demonstrate that a particular institution’s honors program or honors college complies with NCHC’s “best practices” documents. NCHC’s Board of Directors approved the newest characteristic in November, 2007:
A fully developed program will provide priority enrollment for honors students who are active in the program in recognition of their unique class scheduling needs.

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Introduction, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson Jan 2008

Introduction, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Introduction to volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Douglas Reimondo Robertson of Northern Kentucky University.

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Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers Jan 2008

Ethical Guidelines For Educational Developers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Ethical guidelines for educational developers prepared by Mintz, Smith, & Warren, January 1999. Revised March 1999, September 1999, and March 2000.

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Evaluating Teaching: A New Approach To An Old Problem, L. Dee Fink Jan 2008

Evaluating Teaching: A New Approach To An Old Problem, L. Dee Fink

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The approach to evaluating the quality of teaching described in this chapter starts by developing a Model of Good Teaching. This model is then used to create a set of evaluation procedures based on four key dimensions of teaching: design of learning experiences, quality of teacher/student interactions, extent and quality of student learning, and teacher’s effort to improve over time. The challenges and benefits of using these procedures are discussed.

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Investigating Indicators Of The Scholarship Of Teaching: Teaching Awards In Research Universities, Stacie Badran Jan 2008

Investigating Indicators Of The Scholarship Of Teaching: Teaching Awards In Research Universities, Stacie Badran

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Results from a nationwide study of teaching awards programs in mathematics departments of U.S. research universities show that only a small percentage even offers such awards. Those that do either use ad hoc procedures and criteria for making awards or prioritize curricular contributions over instructional and pedagogical knowledge in selecting award winners. In addition, mathematics faculty reserve the term scholarship for research in the discipline rather than research on teaching of the discipline.

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Points Without Limits: Individual Inquiry, Collaborative Investigation, And Collective Scholarship, Richard A. Gale Jan 2008

Points Without Limits: Individual Inquiry, Collaborative Investigation, And Collective Scholarship, Richard A. Gale

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter proposes that a scholarship of teaching and learning focused on collaborative and collective inquiry can be more effective and have greater impact on student learning and the advancement of knowledge than investigations accomplished by individual faculty and students working in isolation. This conclusion is arrived at as a result of examining the work of Carnegie Scholars and the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Campus Program participants since 1998.

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Assessment Of A Faculty Learning Community Program: Do Faculty Members Really Change?, Susan Polich Jan 2008

Assessment Of A Faculty Learning Community Program: Do Faculty Members Really Change?, Susan Polich

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In this study, participants in a faculty learning community (FLC) program were followed to see if they had really changed their epistemological beliefs and teaching methods. Of the 39 FLC participants, 87% reported a change in their epistemological beliefs and 79% reported a change in their teaching methods. Seven participants were followed in-depth to determine if their reported changes actually occurred. Observations suggest that none of the seven appeared to have changed epistemological beliefs although all changed teaching methods. More importantly, the participants adopted their new pedagogy only when the pedagogy was aligned with their beliefs.

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Thawing The Chilly Climate: Inclusive Teaching Resources For Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math, Katherine A. Friederich, Sherill L. Sellers, Judith N. Burstyn Jan 2008

Thawing The Chilly Climate: Inclusive Teaching Resources For Science, Technology, Engineering, And Math, Katherine A. Friederich, Sherill L. Sellers, Judith N. Burstyn

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Although universities are aware of the need to promote diversity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), this awareness has not translated into significant changes in classroom environments. Many STEM instructors would like to offer equal opportunities for success to all of their students, but they are not sure where to begin. We describe an effective group of teaching tools that can empower STEM faculty and graduate students to modify their courses to address diversity at their own pace. These resources extend from awareness exercises to recommendations for action and have been useful tools for course design, teaching assistant training, …

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Easing Entry Into The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding The Disciplines” Approach, Joan K. Middendorf, David Pace Jan 2008

Easing Entry Into The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Through Focused Assessments: The “Decoding The Disciplines” Approach, Joan K. Middendorf, David Pace

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Students’ difficulty in mastering material can motivate faculty toward the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) if instructors’ frustration can be framed as a researchable question, and they have practical models for assessing learning outcomes. The “decoding the disciplines” approach supports this shift from reflective teaching to SoTL. By focusing on narrowly defined bottlenecks to learning, faculty define researchable questions convincing to their disciplines. The specificity of these inquiries makes the assessment of learning much easier through the application of existing tools, such as those provided in Angelo and Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques (1993). Example of specific assessments are provided.

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Preface, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson Jan 2008

Preface, Volume 26 (2008), Douglas Reimondo Robertson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Preface to volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Douglas Reimondo Robertson of Northern Kentucky University.

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About The Authors, Volume 26 (2008) Jan 2008

About The Authors, Volume 26 (2008)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

About the editors and authors of volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

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Stereotype Threat And Ten Things We Can Do To Remove The Threat In The Air, Franklin A. Tuitt, Lois Reddick Jan 2008

Stereotype Threat And Ten Things We Can Do To Remove The Threat In The Air, Franklin A. Tuitt, Lois Reddick

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The purpose of this chapter is to present an overview of the literature related to stereotype threat in an effort to provide faculty members and instructional developers with a better understanding of what the phenomenon is and what can be done about it in college classroom settings. To this end, we reviewed several of the major studies published on the subject between 1995 and 2005 and compiled a list of strategies that reflected both the major empirical findings on stereotype threat and our own research and experiences with faculty and students in college settings. Given the enormity of the subject, …

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Marketing Plans For Faculty Development: Student And Faculty Development Center Collaboration For Mutual Benefit, Victoria Mundy Bhavsar, Steven J. Skinner Jan 2008

Marketing Plans For Faculty Development: Student And Faculty Development Center Collaboration For Mutual Benefit, Victoria Mundy Bhavsar, Steven J. Skinner

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Our faculty development center engaged senior-level business students as consultants to help us inform instructors about our resources. The students argued that organizational and marketing tasks are critical to our pedagogical work as they create opportunities for the pedagogical work to occur. This chapter describes the collaboration, the students’ recommendations, and the center’s response. Engaging students, our ultimate clients, in setting priorities for our center was a powerful learning experience for both us and them. Other centers may wish to use our experiences as impetus to collaborate with students on their campuses.

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Faculty Development At Small And Liberal Arts Colleges, Kim M. Mooney, Michael Reder Jan 2008

Faculty Development At Small And Liberal Arts Colleges, Kim M. Mooney, Michael Reder

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The notable growth of faculty development programs and centers at small institutions warrants attention before their next stages of growth. We aim to capture and convey the central issues coalescing around the professionalization of teaching and learning activities and the work of faculty developers at small colleges. While this descriptive review draws direct comparisons to other types of institutions, particularly large research and comprehensive universities that serve as the norm for our profession’s faculty development practices, its main purpose is to address the distinctive characteristics of professional development at small colleges in general and liberal arts colleges in particular. Toward …

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Credibility And Effectiveness In Context: An Exploration Of The Importance Of Faculty Status For Faculty Developers, Bonnie B. Mullinix Jan 2008

Credibility And Effectiveness In Context: An Exploration Of The Importance Of Faculty Status For Faculty Developers, Bonnie B. Mullinix

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This study documents an emerging profile of the faculty status of faculty developers as solicited, compiled, and interactively interpreted with faculty developer practitioners. It used integrated (mixed) methodology and participatory research strategies to gather data and it shares descriptive statistical information on the various positions held by faculty developer respondents; qualitatively analyzed impressions of the importance of faculty status to their credibility and effectiveness as faculty developers; and information regarding respondents’ institutional contexts. Findings are further disaggregated across institutional contexts and sex to explore trends, differential perceptions, and other emergent issues as identified by participant researchers.

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Co-Teaching As A Faculty Development Model, Andrea L. Beach, Charles Henderson, Michael Famiano Jan 2008

Co-Teaching As A Faculty Development Model, Andrea L. Beach, Charles Henderson, Michael Famiano

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Co-teaching is a promising and cost-effective approach to promoting fundamental research-based instructional change. In this chapter, we discuss the theoretical underpinnings of co-teaching and describe our initial experience with it. A new instructor (MF) co-taught with an instructor experienced in physics education research-based reforms (CH). An outsider (AB) conducted separate interviews with each instructor and observed several class sessions. Results include immediate use of research-based instructional practices by the new instructor and a significant change in teaching beliefs over time. Recommendations are made for implementing co-teaching as part of a faculty development program.

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Promoting Learning–Focused Teaching Through A Project–Based Faculty Development Program, Susanna Calkins, Greg Light Jan 2008

Promoting Learning–Focused Teaching Through A Project–Based Faculty Development Program, Susanna Calkins, Greg Light

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter describes how we incorporated project-based learning into a yearlong faculty development program at a research-intensive private university located in the Midwest. This inquiry-based approach fosters critical reflection on teaching and promotes learner-focused teaching in a manner that encourages deeper student approaches to learning. We use case studies, drawn from critical accounts of faculty projects, to illustrate a model that depicts how faculty understand improvement in their teaching and to identify key program elements that facilitated the adoption of learning-focused teaching practices by our participants.

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Team Mentoring: An Alternative Way To Mentor New Faculty, Tara Gray, A. Jane Birch Jan 2008

Team Mentoring: An Alternative Way To Mentor New Faculty, Tara Gray, A. Jane Birch

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Traditional mentoring programs usually have no mechanism for Protégés to learn from each other, and they often match protégés with mentors sight unseen. Team mentoring is a less hierarchical program in which protégés mentor each other in a group while searching for more permanent and personal mentors. In this program, protégés and mentors are arguably better matched because mentors are chosen by the Protégé. In addition, Protégés benefit by tapping into the wisdom of their peers. As a result, team mentoring is a viable alternative to traditional mentoring programs.

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A Research–Based Rubric For Developing Statements Of Teaching Philosophy, Matthew Kaplan, Deborah S. Meizlish, Christopher O'Neal, Mary C. Wright Jan 2008

A Research–Based Rubric For Developing Statements Of Teaching Philosophy, Matthew Kaplan, Deborah S. Meizlish, Christopher O'Neal, Mary C. Wright

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Despite its ubiquity as the way that instructors represent their views on teaching and learning, the statement of teaching philosophy can be a frustrating document to write and the results are often uneven. This chapter describes a rubric created at the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching to help faculty and graduate students craft teaching statements. We describe the research that informed the creation of the rubric, talk about how we use the rubric in our consultations and workshops, and present an assessment that validates the use of the rubric to improve instructors’ teaching statements.

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Meeting The Challenges Of Integrative Learning: The Nexia Concept, Jane Love Jan 2008

Meeting The Challenges Of Integrative Learning: The Nexia Concept, Jane Love

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Integrative learning challenges faculty developers to facilitate integrative and connective experiences not only for students, but for faculty as well. For many faculty, curricular requirements impede connective teaching, and the widespread assumption that connectivity must be taught on the course level also limits their ability to enrich students’ learning through diverse perspectives and interactions. Nexia is an approach to this problem based on the concept of ad hoc connectivity, or small-scale, focused, short-term connections that allow students from two or more courses to interact around points of interest to both classes. By releasing connective teaching from expensive curricular constraints, the …

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The Teaching Resource Portfolio: A Tool Kit For Future Professoriate And A Resource Guide For Current Teachers, Dieter J. Schönwetter Jan 2008

The Teaching Resource Portfolio: A Tool Kit For Future Professoriate And A Resource Guide For Current Teachers, Dieter J. Schönwetter

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Extensive annotated bibliographies have guided academic researchers over several years and in various disciplines, providing key resources to assist in the development of new ideas. However, less common are published annotated bibliographies on effective teaching resources, both general to teaching across various disciplines as well as specific to each discipline, that guide the academic in the teaching enterprise. This chapter focuses on a tool, the teaching resource portfolio, that helps the graduate student preparing for an academic career including teaching, the new faculty member desiring additional teaching resources, the academic wishing to have resources that support discipline-specific scholarship of teaching …

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Reflecting And Writing About Our Teaching, Mark Weisberg Jan 2008

Reflecting And Writing About Our Teaching, Mark Weisberg

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Reflecting on what we are doing can help us become better teachers and better people; yet in our increasingly busy and stressful lives, how can we find the space and time? This chapter describes and exemplifies two strategies that can help us and our colleagues become more reflective about our teaching and about our vocation: the Teachers’ Reading Circle, meeting for regular discussions of provocative texts about teaching and learning, and the Teachers’ Writing Circle, using prompts and examples of colleagues’ writing to set participants on an extended course of writing about their own teaching.

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Breaking Down Barriers To The Use Of Technology For Teaching In Higher Education, Erping Zhu Jan 2008

Breaking Down Barriers To The Use Of Technology For Teaching In Higher Education, Erping Zhu

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter examines the most common technologies used for teaching on college campuses and the most common barriers to advanced uses of technology tools. Survey results consistently show that the major barriers to incorporating technology into higher education are lack of faculty time, faculty doubts about the relevancy of technology to disciplinary learning, and inadequate technical support for faculty projects and technology uses. This chapter, then, proposes several approaches developed and assessed by the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan for removing those barriers to technology uses in higher education. Although providing flexible technology …

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Bibliography, Volume 26 (2008) Jan 2008

Bibliography, Volume 26 (2008)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Bibliography for volume 26 (2008) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

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Mentoring Honors Thesis Students: A Lawyer’S Perspective, Linda Vila Jan 2008

Mentoring Honors Thesis Students: A Lawyer’S Perspective, Linda Vila

Honors in Practice Online Archive

As a mentor of thesis students in an honors program, I find that students acquire tremendously helpful substantive knowledge through courses they take during college but rarely develop a honed skill set necessary to succeed in graduate or professional education or employment in the real world. These skills range from problem solving to effective communication to analytical thinking. To address these weaknesses, I constructed an approach, borrowed from my law school days, for engaging students in an active, student-centered learning process during the thesis stage of their honors curriculum. My purpose is to provide them the opportunity to cultivate, if …

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Learning By Leading And Leading By Teaching: A Student-Led Honors Seminar, Luke Vassiliou Jan 2008

Learning By Leading And Leading By Teaching: A Student-Led Honors Seminar, Luke Vassiliou

Honors in Practice Online Archive

In the fall of 2004, the honors program at the two-year Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College offered six core classes and two one-hour seminars for the Honors students, and nothing else. The classes themselves were rewarding for both students and teachers and encouraged student participation, but since the program’s existence was limited to the space within the classroom walls, it had low visibility on campus and none beyond our campus. As a new (and completely inexperienced) honors director, I consulted both the NCHC executive committee’s statement of “Basic Characteristics of a Fully Developed Honors Program” (1994) and Rew Godow’s article on …

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