Center for Learning & Teaching

In the tradition of The Power of Habit and Thinking, Fast and Slow comes a practical, playful, and endlessly fascinating guide to what we really know about learning and memory today--and how we can apply it to our own lives.

Now updated with new research--the book that has changed millions of lives After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset--those who believe that abilities are fixed--are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset--those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

"As scholarly as [it] is . . . this book about education happens to double as an optimistic, even thrilling, summer read." --The New York Times A brilliant combination of science and its real-world application, Now You See It sheds light on one of the greatest problems of our historical moment: our schools and businesses are designed for the last century, not for a world in which technology has reshaped the way we think and learn. In this informed and optimistic work, Cathy N. Davidson takes us on a tour of the future of work and education, introducing us to visionaries whose groundbreaking ideas will soon affect every arena of our lives, from schools with curriculums built around video games to workplaces that use virtual environments to train employees.

Easy-to-apply, scientifically-based approaches for engaging students in the classroom Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn.It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences. Nine, easy-to-understand principles with clear applications for the classroom Includes surprising findings, such as that intelligence is malleable, and that you cannot develop "thinking skills" without facts.

Based on Dave Burgess's popular "Outrageous Teaching" and "Teach Like a PIRATE" seminars, this book offers inspiration, practical techniques, and innovative ideas that will help you to increase student engagement, boost your creativity, and transform your life as an educator. You'll learn how to tap into and dramatically increase your passion as an teacher. Also, learn how to develop outrageously engaging lessons that will draw students in like a magnet and how to transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students. This groundbreaking inspirational manifesto contains over 30 hooks specially designed to captivate your class and 170 brainstorming questions that will skyrocket your creativity. Once you learn the Teach Like a PIRATE system, you'll never look at your role as an educator the same again.

50 Techniques for Engaging Students and Assessing Learning in College Courses Do you want to: Know what and how well your students are learning? Promote active learning in ways that readily integrate assessment? Gather information that can help make grading more systematic and streamlined? Efficiently collect solid learning outcomes data for institutional assessment? Provide evidence of your teaching effectiveness for promotion and tenure review? Learning Assessment Techniques provides 50 easy-to-implement active learning techniques that gauge student learning across academic disciplines and learning environments. Using Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning as its organizational framework, it embeds assessment within active learning activities.

Keeping students involved, motivated, and actively learning is challenging educators across the country,yet good advice on how to accomplish this has not been readily available. Student Engagement Techniques is a comprehensive resource that offers college teachers a dynamic model for engaging students and includes over one hundred tips, strategies, and techniques that have been proven to help teachers from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions motivate and connect with their students. The ready-to-use format shows how to apply each of the book's techniques in the classroom and includes purpose, preparation, procedures, examples, online implementation, variations and extensions, observations and advice, and key resources.

Peer Instruction:  A User's Manual is a step-by-step guide for instructors on how to plan and implement Peer Instruction lectures. The teaching methodology is applicable to a variety of introductory science courses (including biology and chemistry). However, the additional material--class-tested, ready-to-use resources, in print and on CD-ROM (so professors can reproduce them as handouts or transparencies)--is intended for calculus-based physics courses.

Research into how we learn has opened the door for utilizing cognitive theory to facilitate better student learning. But that's easier said than done. Many books about cognitive theory introduce radical but impractical theories, failing to make the connection to the classroom. In Small Teaching, James Lang presents a strategy for improving student learning with a series of modest but powerful changes that make a big difference. These strategies are designed to bridge the chasm between primary research and the classroom environment in a way that can be implemented by any faculty in any discipline, and even integrated into pre-existing teaching techniques. Small teaching techniques include brief classroom or online learning activities, one-time interventions, and small modifications in course design or communication with students.

WITH A FOREWORD BY AARON SAMS. If you've decided to flip your class, you probably have new questions: How do I do this? What will it look like? What will students do in class? How will I create learning experiences for students outside of class? What have other teachers done? Flipping 2.0:Practical Strategies for Flipping Your Class seeks to answer your questions. And it opens the dialogue for us to continue to learn together. In this book, you will follow practicing classroom teachers as they walk you through their flipped classroom journey; why and how they made the change, what obstacles they overcame, the technology they used, and where they are heading next. As a flipped learning teacher, you need time to check out workable solutions that other teachers have created. Look inside their classrooms and learn from their experiences. Watch flipped teachers at work. Pick the brains of those who've been there, and join the conversation.

Essential reading for online instructors, updated to cover new and emerging issues and technologies The Online Teaching Survival Guide provides a robust overview of theory-based techniques for teaching online or technology-enhanced courses. Covering all aspects of online teaching, this book reviews the latest research in cognitive processing and related learning outcomes while retaining a focus on the practical. A simple framework of instructional strategies mapped across a four-phase timeline provides a concrete starting point for both new online teachers and experienced teachers designing or revamping an online course.

What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is--it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand.

The classic teaching toolbox, updated with new research and ideas Teaching at Its Best is the bestselling, research-based toolbox for college instructors at any level, in any higher education setting. Packed with practical guidance, proven techniques, and expert perspectives, this book helps instructors improve student learning both face-to-face and online. This new fourth edition features five new chapters on building critical thinking into course design, creating a welcoming classroom environment, helping students learn how to learn, giving and receiving feedback, and teaching in multiple modes, along with the latest research and new questions to facilitate faculty discussion. Topics include new coverage of the flipped classroom, cutting-edge technologies, self-regulated learning, the mental processes involved in learning and memory, and more, in the accessible format and easy-to-understand style that has made this book a much-valued resource among college faculty.

This book is a classroom-tested “tool kit” for faculty members who want to develop their teaching practice. The 35 articles are drawn from the pages of The Teaching Professor newsletter and are written by college faculty. They contain concrete pedagogical strategies that have been tested in the classrooms and form a handbook of classroom strategies.

Whether you're preparing to teach your first online course or seeking to upgrade your current offerings, this book is the go-to guide you've been looking for. Online faculty frequently work at some location other than their "home" campus, which can make it difficult for them to access the targeted collegial support and professional development it takes to truly flourish as educators. Teaching Strategies for the Online College Classroom helps bridge this gap. A collection of articles by leading distance education experts, this book is designed by and for busy college and university faculty. It combines real-world-tested tips and methodologies with a pedagogically sound perspective to help you take your online educational practices to the next level.

They're not the students strolling across the bucolic liberal arts campuses where their grandfathers played football. They are first-generation college students--children of immigrants and blue-collar workers--who know that their hopes for success hinge on a degree. But college is expensive, unfamiliar, and intimidating. Inexperienced students expect tough classes and demanding, remote faculty. They may not know what an assignment means, what a score indicates, or that a single grade is not a definitive measure of ability. And they certainly don't feel entitled to be there. They do not presume success, and if they have a problem, they don't expect to receive help or even a second chance. Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges. She shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Most memorably, she describes how easily students can feel defeated--by their real-world responsibilities and by the demands of college--and come to conclude that they just don't belong there after all. Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students' success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.

Nihil Nimus is a unique and essential guide to the start of a successful academic career. As its title suggests (nothing in excess), it advocates moderation in ways of working, based on the single-most reliable difference between new faculty who thrive and those who struggle. By following its practical, easy-to-use rules, novice faculty can learn to teach with the highest levels of student approval, involvement, and comprehension, with only modest preparation times and a greater reliance on spontaneity and student participation.

Belonging - with peers, in the classroom, or on campus - is a crucial part of the college experience. It can affect a student's degree of academic achievement, or even whether they stay in school. Although much is known about the causes and impact of sense of belonging in students, little is known about how belonging differs based on students' social identities, such as race, gender, or sexual orientation, or the conditions they encounter on campus. College Students' Sense of Belonging addresses these student sub-populations and campus environments. It offers readers practical guidelines, underpinned by theory and research, for helping students belong and thrive.

This indispensable handbook provides helpful strategies for dealing with both the everyday challenges of university teaching and those that arise in efforts to maximize learning for every student. The suggested strategies are supported by research and adaptable to specific classroom situations. Rather than suggest a "set of recipes" to be followed mechanically, the book gives instructors the tools they need to deal with the ever-changing dynamics of teaching and learning.