This chapter describes a professional development program that integrates training in college teaching with an authentic classroom teaching experience. Benefits to graduate students in the program and undergraduate students in the linked disciplinary first-year seminar are discussed.

In 2006, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) launched a major initiative, the Top 25 Project, to embed inquiry-guided learning (IGL) into its largest-enrollment courses across the university. These are generally entry-level classes and thus affect many students: 75 percent of incoming students on its main campus in 2010 were in at least one Top 25…

The term "assessment" sends shivers down academic spines. For faculty, it signals marching orders from external parties who may or may not appreciate the subtle and not always quantifiable value of faculty efforts. For administrators, it means the dual challenge of recalibrating internal measures to meet external mandates but also…

The scholarship of teaching and learning has been a primary motivator and focus of faculty learning communities. This chapter reports on the strategies, processes, and activities that foster this scholarship in FLCs. (Contains 1 table and 1 exhibit.)

Consultants and clients take on various roles when they engage in discussions about college teaching. There are several models applicable to this interaction. More attention should be focused, in both research and practice, on the interactive style of the consultant and client and its contribution to effective consultation. (MSE)

The faculty development movement of the 1970s and 1980s is taking new directions. One model that enhances intrinsic motivations to teach well and uses institutional structures to encourage autonomy and personal initiative holds promise for undergraduate instruction. (Author/MSE)

Analysis of Bush Foundation regional programs in faculty development resulted in conclusions concerning the characteristics of successful development activities. It was found that grants encouraging teamwork are more productive than isolated grants for scholarship. Guidelines are also needed to assist in faculty evaluations and prepare faculty for…

To be approached realistically, improvement of college teaching must be viewed from a faculty perspective. The real world of college teaching offers little information about objectives and outcomes. The situation can be changed most effectively by increasing available information and stimulating communication among faculty about instruction. (MSE)

Superior college teachers can make valuable contributions to both their institutions and one another when their institutions help them form communities of expertise, modeled on national academies for outstanding individuals in the sciences and arts. The small number of such teaching academies in the United States has varied structures, goals, and…

Presents a continuum of the development and growth toward a scholarship of teaching. Explores whether a scholar of teaching studies teaching as a discipline in itself or whether teaching is studied through another discipline. Suggests how the isolation of the scholarship of teaching from the primary work of the disciplines and of departments might…

Faculty learning communities have many attributes that can contribute to the successful preparation of graduate students as future faculty members. (Contains 1 table.)

Offers suggestions on how the scholarship of teaching could be built into graduate and faculty development programs, and introduces a model that could serve as a framework for courses on learning to teach in higher education. (EV)

Suggests that service learning, as an innovative practice in college teaching, challenges faculty in complex ways and proposes a matrix to help conceptualize different focus areas in service learning (student, expertise, sponsor, or common good) and instructional concerns (values development, pedagogical strategies, academic culture, and community…

Feedback, instead of evaluation, needs to be the main technique used in faculty development, and its primary focus should be on instructional improvement. Faculty consultants need to devote more time to helping both faculty and students through effective feedback techniques and the development of communication and interpersonal skills. (MLW)

Many college faculty are reluctant to examine and refine their own classroom communication skills, for a variety of reasons, but teachers should focus on developing the effectiveness of their classroom instruction through the student-teacher relationship. (MSE)