There are many ways to collect information about college teaching. Many are quick, easy, and unintrusive, and are valuable supplements to the standard source of information, student ratings. A matrix of data needs and corresponding sources of course, instructor, and student information helps refine the information gathering process. (MSE)

Outlines some basic components of effective learning processing and then suggests tasks or ways of presenting information during lecture that can induce such processing by students. (EV)

Explores how higher education can focus more clearly on the development of successful intelligence--a kind of knowing that permits creative use of information, analysis of complex topics, and its application in a variety of settings. (EV)

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)

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)

Assessment of college teaching is viewed broadly as the gathering of information for understanding and improving teaching as well as judging its quality. It is seen to play a crucial support role at each stage of instructional development: problem clarification, instructional design/redesign, and field testing and implementation. (MSE)

Asserts that the field of discourse processing offers some solutions to the challenge of promoting deep comprehension during learning. Sketches the salient components of discourse processing mechanisms and points out how such mechanisms can be recruited to improve deep comprehension. (EV)

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)

When faculty include assessment as part of the learning process, student learning and teaching are both enhanced. Faculty must integrate expected learning outcomes, assessment, and feedback mechanisms to clarify what should be taught, expectations of students, collaboration with other faculty, and evaluation quality to judge learning and teaching.…

Two types of research, general theoretical and specific practical, are involved in the evaluation and improvement of university teaching. Not all faculty members can or will carry out general theoretical research, although they can benefit from its findings. However, all can and should carry out specific practical research on their own teaching.…

The prevailing notion of integration of college teaching and research is more myth than reality. To make the relationship more productive, educators must change the terms, redefine research, and reorient thinking about teaching, understanding that teaching and research are distinct and not automatically linked. Institutions must implement policies…

Eight of the most common faculty concerns about student evaluations of instruction are discussed: inconsistent student judgments, the perception that only colleagues are qualified to evaluate peers' instruction, student-rating schemes as popularity contests, unreliable and invalid student-rating forms, etc. Research shows that faculty concerns are…

Academic reward systems are widely perceived to emphasize research over teaching, inhibiting instructional and curricular change. Despite much conversation about changing the reward system for faculty, there is reluctance to take action. Unless teaching is better rewarded, there is a danger that external agencies will introduce their own measures…

Differences in the kinds of knowledge validation processes, truth criteria, and other factors associated with knowledge production are presented for five disciplines (physics, engineering, psychology, education, and English literature), and implications for improving instruction are examined. It is concluded that faculty must understand the…

Classroom research addresses the why and how of learning, encouraging teachers to use their classrooms as laboratories for the study of learning. At its best it involves students as collaborators rather than as subjects. Classroom research has the potential for creating teaching and learning communities with the shared goal of understanding…