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 focuses on intentional educational development activities designed to prepare faculty for effective teaching and assessment of student learning. Some benefits of such activities include improved alignment of courses with programmatic outcomes, higher success rates in course reviews, and better demonstration of student learning on…

This chapter uses a descriptive methodology that focuses on how the undergraduate team at a large multi-campus research university located in a mid-Atlantic state advocates and provides support for the scholarship of teaching and learning for non-tenure nursing teaching faculty from a variety of perspectives.

Thirty years ago, Chickering and Gamson (1987) authored a widely distributed and still influential manuscript in which they identified seven principles of effective undergraduate education. The first principle they cite is encouraging "contacts between students and faculty" (p. 3). This chapter examines the extensive research base…

This chapter discusses a three-tiered undergraduate service-learning program as a collaborative leadership structure, incorporating high-impact practices.

This chapter addresses the transformative use of the creative writing workshop as pedagogical method in undergraduate, graduate, and community-based creative nonfiction classes.

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) is not new to Texas A&M University, a large research-extensive institution. The ideas of asking questions and seeking answers have always been associated at this university with both learning and discovery. In this article the authors present how, as a natural extension, Texas A&M University infuses IGL more…

New Zealand is unique in the global tertiary education environment because there is a legislative requirement that teaching and research are closely interdependent and that most teaching in universities and all degree-granting institutions should be done by people who are active in advancing knowledge. Moreover, the Tertiary Education Strategy…

Marymount University is a midsized, independent Catholic university whose mission combines a liberal arts foundation with career preparation and opportunities for personal and professional development. The university is moderately selective with a highly diverse undergraduate student population. Approximately half of Marymount undergraduates are…

At Wagner College, students are required to participate in a series of three curriculum-based learning communities (C-BLCs) as the core of the undergraduate curriculum known as the Wagner Plan for the Practical Liberal Arts. This article describes the senior learning community (LC) in psychology at Wagner College, which is an example of a…

Learning communities have increasingly become a mechanism for education reform in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Recognizing that learning occurs both inside and outside the classroom, their emergence is partly a response to the critique that undergraduate education at American research universities lacks integrated and…

In problem-based learning (PBL), students working in collaborative groups learn by resolving complex, realistic problems under the guidance of faculty. There is some evidence of PBL effectiveness in medical school settings where it began, and there are numerous accounts of PBL implementation in various undergraduate contexts, replete with…

Inquiry-guided learning (IGL) has widespread appeal in higher education as a suite of teaching strategies that promotes learning through students' increasingly independent investigation of questions, problems, and issues using the methods of inquiry of the disciplines. Framed as especially appropriate for research universities, IGL has been…

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…

At North Carolina State University, inquiry-guided learning offered a compelling framework for integrating the undergraduate curriculum across general education and the major. Rather than adopting a definition of inquiry-guided learning as a prescribed set of approaches, participating faculty and staff members agreed on four overarching intended…