This chapter describes assessment strategies as applied through a course redesign in an undergraduate Social Problems course that features local, national, and international topics. The alignment between the assessment strategies used in this course and the pedagogical improvements implemented is intentionally directed at the development of…

This chapter describes the Integrated Online Team-Based Learning (IO-TBL) model, an online TBL course design which utilizes both asynchronous and synchronous modes of engagement to maximize the benefits of TBL in an online environment. Students' perceptions of the effective and ineffective aspects of the IO-TBL model are also reported.

We discuss how a professor worked with six students to design and implement a complex teaching strategy for a course, and used the students' assistance to create a sustainable model for future iterations of the course.

This chapter demonstrates how Decoding work can be used productively within a curriculum change process to help make design decisions based on a more nuanced understanding of student learning and the relationship of a professional program to the field.

Racial awareness is a critical foundation to racial sensitivity, and it is a necessity for future professionals who want to be prepared to succeed in an increasingly diverse society. Several factors have been shown to influence racial awareness in professionals including their own race, their personal experience with racism, and the amount/quality…

The initiative to revise Texas Christian University's (TCU) general education curriculum was one of the outcomes of an institutional strategic planning process in 2000, the Commission on the Future of TCU. Coincident with this planning process, TCU developed a new institutional mission statement that focused on preparing students for becoming…

A college education has never been so necessary, or so expensive. It is incumbent upon us, the educators, to do it the best we can. The products of our work are not the buildings on our campuses but our students who go out into this complicated and exciting world to serve as its leaders, its citizens, and its workers. The Bates College general…

Team-based learning (TBL) may rely on small group interaction more heavily than any other commonly used instructional strategy in postsecondary education. This conclusion is based on three facts: (1) Group work with TBL is central to exposing students to and improving their ability to apply course content; (2) Majority of class time with TBL is…

Suggests that as professors contemplate designing and implementing problem-based learning, they are likely to encounter many obstacles that may persuade them to abandon their efforts. To help alleviate these problems, this article provides insights into how professors overcome these obstacles. (SWM)

Defines heuristics as cognitive "rules of thumb" that can help problem solvers work more efficiently and effectively. Professors can use a heuristic model of problem solving to guide students in all disciplines through the steps of problem-solving. (SWM)

Asserts that within the context of problem-based learning environments, professors can encourage students to use computers as problem-solving tools. The ten-step Integrating Technology for InQuiry (NteQ) model guides professors through the process of integrating computers into problem-based learning activities. (SWM)

Faculty learning communities create connections for isolated teachers, establish networks for those pursuing pedagogical issues, meet early-career faculty expectations for community, foster multidisciplinary curricula, and begin to bring community to higher education. The following are appended: (1) Qualities Necessary for Community in FLCs; and…

Honors programs are reviewed that use diversity in presentation, approach, and educational context to foster intellectual development. They individualize instruction and encourage students both to form partnerships in learning and to develop their own strategies for integrating information. (MSE)

In a freshman engineering graphics course at Santa Clara University (California), mechanical engineering students learn to solve ill-structured design problems using graphic communication skills. Integration of a critical thinking component has guided the faculty's own iterative, interactive process of designing a more effective teaching method.…

Discussion of the problem-based learning approach in higher education looks at its origins in medical curricula, characteristics of the original method, the variety of educational objectives possible with this approach, problem-based curriculum development, advantages of the method, and its use outside the medical domain. (MSE)