Jim,
Thanks for forwarding this. Lots of things we could discuss at the TB.
Barbara
-----Original Message-----
From: Greenberg, James
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 9:09 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: STRATEGIES THAT IMPROVE UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
TBers,
I am on a listserv called "Tomorrow's Professor". Recently this was
posted to that list. I thought you might find it interesting.
Information on how to join this listserv is at the bottom of this
message. Many of these ideas have been talked about at past Teaching
Breakfasts and perhaps future sessions should touch on more of these.
Mr. James B. Greenberg
Director Teaching, Learning and Technology Center
Milne Library
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, New York 13820
email: [log in to unmask]
phone: 607-436-2701
"Ignorance is curable, stupidity lasts forever"
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Folks:
The posting below summaries many of the strategies that research has
shown to be effective in enhancing student learning. It is from
Chapter 10, Teaching Strategies for the Twenty-First Century, by
James Eison in Field Guide to Academic Leadership, Robert M. Diamond,
editor, Bronwyn Adam, assistant editor. Published by JOSSEY-BASS, A
Wiley Company, San Francisco. http://www.josseybass.com Copyright (c)
2002 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jossey-Bass is a registered trademark
of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with
permission.
Rick Reis
[log in to unmask]
UP NEXT: Using Cases in Higher Education
Tomorrow's Teaching and Learning
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STRATEGIES THAT IMPROVE UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION
A variety of well-researched scholarly publications (for example,
Association of American Colleges Task Group on General Education,
1988; Donovan, Bransford, & Pellegrino, 1999; Engelkemeyer & Brown,
1998; Study Group on the Conditions of Excellence in American Higher
Education, 1984) spanning over fifteen years provide both faculty and
academic administrators with a clear, consistent, and comprehensive
description of instructional strategies for enhanced student
learning. For illustrative purposes here, the findings and
recommendations of three such reports will be mentioned briefly.
Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education
The single best known description of teaching practices that promote
student learning is Chickering and Gamon's (1987, 1991, 1999) "Seven
Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education." First
published in an article in the March 1987 AAHE Bulletin, the authors'
provocative and pithy review of the research literature was later
reproduced by the Johnson Foundation and over 150,000 copies were
distributed. Subsequently, several articles and texts based on this
landmark document, along with helpful instruments to assess
instructor and institutional effectiveness in each of these seven
areas, have been created (Gamson & Poulsen, 1989). These assessment
inventories can be found in Chickering and Gamson (1991) and Hatfield
(1995). The seven principles of good practice are these:
1. Encourages contact between students and faculty. Frequent
student-faculty contact in and out of class is the most important
factor in student motivation and involvement.
2. Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students. Learning is
enhanced when it resembles a team effort rather than a solo race.
3. Encourages active learning. Learning is not a spectator sport.
Students must talk about what they are learning, write about it,
relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives.
They must make what they learn part of themselves.
4. Gives prompt feedback. Knowing what you do and do not know focuses
learning. Students need appropriate feedback on performance to
benefit from courses.
5. Emphasizes time on task. Time plus energy equals learning. There
is no substitute for time on task.
6. Communicates high expectations. If teachers expect more they will get
more.
7. Respects diverse talents and ways of learning. There are many
roads to learning. Students need the opportunity to show their
talents and learn in ways that work for them.
Other Best Practices
Angelo (1993) similarly articulated for faculty and administrators a
well-supported list "fourteen general research-based principles for
improving higher learning."
1. Active learning is more effective than passive learning.
2. Learning is more effective and efficient when learners have
explicit, reasonable, positive goals, and when their goals fit well
with teachers' goals.
3. High expectations encourage high achievement.
4. Motivation to learn is alterable; it can be positively or
negatively affected by the task, the environment, the teacher, and
the learner.
5. Learning requires focused attention and awareness of the
importance of what is to be learned.
6. To be remembered, new information must be meaningfully connected
to prior knowledge, and it must first be remembered in order to be
learned.
7. Unlearning what is already known is often more difficult than
learning new information.
8. Information that is organized in personally meaningful ways is
more likely to be remembered, learned, and used.
9. To be most effective, teachers need to balance levels of
intellectual challenge and instructional support.
10. Mastering a complex skill or body of knowledge takes great
amounts of time and effort.
11. Learning to transfer, to apply previous knowledge and skills to
new contexts, requires a great deal of directed practice.
12. The ways in which learners are assessed and evaluated powerfully
affect the ways they study and learn.
13. Interaction between teachers and learners is one of the most
powerful factors in promoting learning; interaction among learners is
another.
14. Learners need feedback on their learning, early and often, to
learn well; to become independent learners, they need to become
self-assessing and self-correcting.
Among the more recent analyses of how instructors can be most helpful
in facilitating student learning is the report of the Joint Task
Force on Student Learning, created by the American Association of
Higher Education, the American College Personnel Association, and the
National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. This
document articulated ten principles of learning and identified a
large number of actions and initiatives that have been used on
various campuses to implement these principles (Engelkemeyer & Brown,
1998). The ten principles of learning are these:
1. Learning is fundamentally about making and maintaining
connections: biologically through neural networks; mentally among
concepts, ideas, and meanings; and experientially through interaction
between the mind and the environment, self and other, generality and
context, deliberation and action.
2. Learning is enhanced by taking place in the context of a
compelling situation that balances challenge and opportunity,
stimulating and using the brain's ability to conceptualize quickly
ant its capacity and need for contemplation and reflection upon
experiences.
3. Learning is an active search for meaning by the learner =
constructing knowledge rather than passively receiving it, shaping as
well as being shaped by experiences.
4. Learning is developmental, a cumulative process involving the
whole person, relating past and present, integrating the new with the
old, starting from but transcending personal concerns and interests.
5. Learning is done by individuals who are intrinsically tied to
others as social beings, interacting as competitors or collaborators,
constraining or supporting the learning process, and able to enhance
learning through cooperation and sharing.
6. Learning is strongly affected by the educational climate in which
it takes place; the settings and surroundings, the influences of
others, and the values accorded to the life of the mind and to
learning achievements.
7. Learning requires frequent feedback if it is to be sustained,
practice if it is to be nourished, and opportunities to use what has
been learned.
8. Much learning takes place informally and incidentally, beyond
explicit teaching or the classroom, in contacts with faculty and
staff, peers, campus life, active social and community involvement,
and unplanned but interesting, complex situations.
9. Learning is grounded in particular contexts and individual
experiences, requiring effort to transfer specific knowledge and
skills to other circumstances or to more general understandings and
ability of individuals to monitor their own learning, to understand
how knowledge is acquired to develop strategies for learning based on
discerning their capacities and limitations, and to be aware of their
own ways of knowing in approaching new bodies of knowledge and
disciplinary frameworks.
10. Learning involves the ability of individuals to monitor their own
learning, to understand how knowledge is acquired to develop
strategies for learning based on discerning their capacities and
limitations, and to be aware of their own ways of knowing in
approaching new bodies of knowledge and disciplinary framework.
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