APPENDIX B

SUGGESTED READINGS

Faculty members often come up to me after my workshops and ask for a list of additional readings on specific aspects of significant learning, course design, or college teaching in general. This list is my response to that request. Although obviously not all-inclusive, it is at least one person’s guide to readings that offer valuable ideas on specific aspects of teaching, including several of the themes in this book:

• Course design in general
• Frameworks for formulating learning goals
• Assessing student learning
• Creating learning activities
• Teaching with technology
• Using small groups
• Compendia of good ideas on college teaching

Course Design in General

The first two books listed here also provide a learning-centered approach to the topic of designing learning experiences. Wiggins and McTighe uses the language of backward design and Biggs and Tang use constructive alignment. They all mean the same as what I mean by integrated course design.

Wiggins, G., and McTighe, J. 2005. Understanding by Design, 2nd ed. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Although aimed primarily at public school teachers, this book offers a model of design based on the same principles as the one in this book. The authors urge teachers to develop a good set of learning goals and then design that quality into the learning experience. They are also the creators of the phrase backward design.

Biggs, J., and Tang, C. 2011. Teaching for Quality Learning, 4th ed. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

This book, originally published in 1999, using the term constructive alignment to indicate that learning activities and assessment activities are aligned with desired learning outcomes. This book has been especially influential in British Commonwealth countries.

Another form of design courses that indicates teachers should make sure the desired learning outcomes, learning activities, and assessment activities are aligned. Also offers the structure of observed learning outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy that identifies levels of understanding of particular kinds of learning.

Diamond, R. M. 1998. Designing and Assessing Courses and Curricula: A Practical Guide, rev. ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Draws on the author’s extensive experience in working with whole academic units as well as with professors to systematically design instruction. This is one of the few sources that focuses on designing curricula as well as courses.

Frameworks for Formulating Learning Goals

In this book, I have offered the taxonomy of significant learning to provide a broad framework for this important, beginning task in good course design. There are however other frameworks that can be used.

Wiggins, G., and McTighe, J. 2005. Understanding by Design, 2nd ed. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

The authors offer a list of “six facets of understanding” that admirably goes beyond cognitive learning to include such categories as empathy and self-knowledge. It is very similar to the taxonomy of significant learning except that it does not include anything on learning how to learn.

Association of American Colleges and Universities. 2007. College Learning for the New Global Century. Washington, DC: AAC&U.

AAC&U commissioned a group to interview education, business, and civic leaders about the kind of learning needed in the twenty-first century. They generated a list with four major categories and several subcategories. This has been used by many universities to set up campuswide learning goals.

Biggs, J., and Tang, C. 2007. Teaching for Quality Learning, 3rd ed. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Biggs has worked on his SOLO taxonomy for many years. In my view, it is not a taxonomy of kinds of learning but rather a description of different levels of depth or complexity of learning. However, it still offers valuable insight into what we might want to strive for in our statements of desired learning outcomes.

Anderson, L. W., and Krathwohl, David R., eds. 2001. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

The authors, former students and colleagues of Bloom, reviewed and revised his famous cognitive taxonomy. They did not make major changes, other than to relabel synthesis as creating and to place it at the top of the hierarchy above evaluating.

Assessing Student Learning

Many teachers have difficulty imagining how to evaluate learning once they try to move beyond content understanding and basic application learning. The good news is that there are multiple books to help all of us learn how to do this better.

Wiggins, G. 1998. Educative Assessment: Designing Assessments to Inform and Improve Student Performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Assessment of student learning should do more than measure “whether they got it”; it should also enhance the learning itself, that is, be educative.

Angelo, T., and Cross, P. 1993. Classroom Assessment Techniques, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The authors offer an extensive list of easy-to-use techniques that can help teachers assess learning, teaching, and student characteristics.

Walvoord, B., and Anderson, V. 2010. Effective Grading, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The authors lay out a larger-than-usual view of this common and often dreaded task of teaching. They argue that grading needs to be linked to learning goals and learning activities, and that when done right, it informs students about the quality of their learning and informs teachers of the quality of their teaching.

Stevens, D. D., and Levi, A. J. 2005. Introduction to Rubrics. Sterling, Va.: Stylus.

This compact book (about one hundred pages) offers a good introduction on how to use rubrics, something that is needed if we want students to learn how to do anything well.

Creating Learning Activities

Ever since the concept of active learning was introduced in 1991, we have been enhancing our understanding of what our learning activities should be.

Barkley, E. 2010. Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

This book, modeled after the structure of classroom assessment techniques, offers a well-organized set of activities that will improve your ability to get students more engaged with their learning.

Zubizaretta, J. 2009. The Learning Portfolio: Reflective Practice for Improving Student Learning, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Learning portfolios are a powerful tool for helping students learn how to reflect on and assess their own learning. Students need to become highly self-aware of themselves as learners if we want them to become effective self-directing learners. Learning portfolios are a good way to help them do that.

Bean, J. C. 1996. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

A rich collection of chapters that link writing to two other widespread goals in higher education: critical thinking and active learning. An excellent resource for ideas and advice.

Teaching with Technology

Bowen, J. A. 2012. Teaching Naked: How Moving Technology out of Your College Classroom Will Improve Student Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The author makes a persuasive case—and provides numerous tips—for using technology, not as a replacement for face-to-face interactions but as a supplement. Extremely valuable, especially for those of us who are not digital natives.

Using Small Groups

Gradually but steadily teachers are realizing that a superior form of learning happens when students engage in a dialogue with each other on focused, content-related questions and problems. This means we need to learn how to use small groups effectively.

Michaelsen, L. K., Knight, A. B., and Fink, L. D. 2002. Team-Based Learning: A Transformative Use of Small Groups for Large and Small Classes. Sterling, Va.: Stylus.

Team-based learning is a particular way of using small groups that is rapidly being adopted because it is relatively easy to use and yet sophisticated enough to generate powerful forms of learning in a wide range of teaching situations. See www.teambasedlearning.org.

Duch, B., Groh, S., and Allen, D. 2001. The Power of Problem-Based Learning. Sterling, Va.: Stylus.

There are numerous books on this second teaching strategy based on small groups but I have found this one particular enlightening. This strategy teaches students how to solve complex problems in groups and how to learn on their own.

Barkley, E. F., and others. 2005. Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The authors describe thirty different ways of using small groups, organized under five distinct purposes. They also offer good suggestions on how to use small groups effectively.

Millis, B. 2010. Cooperative Learning in Higher Education. Sterling, Va.: Stylus.

Small-group projects work much better when they are carefully structured with specific kinds of learning in mind. This book describes multiple ways of using small groups in a wide range of disciplines and instructional situations.

Compendia of Good Ideas on College Teaching

The following resources are not focused specially on course design but they do offer valuable ideas on that and other topics related to college teaching.

Nilson, L. B. 2010. Teaching at Its Best, 3rd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

The author continues to collect and organize great ideas about teaching from the literature on college teaching.

Davis, B. 2009. Tools for Teaching, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

This is one of the gems among books on college teaching. It is valuable not only for the quality of ideas in the book but also because of the way it is organized. This makes it easy to find comments on almost any question you might have.

Svinicki, M., and McKeachie, W. J. 2010. McKeachie’s Teaching Tips, 14th ed. Covington, Ky.: Wadsworth.

This is the classic book of this genre. Originally started by McKeachie alone, then with help from Svinicki, the book collects information from the research literature on various topics pertaining to college teaching.

http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm

The people maintaining this Web site have perused widely for creative and innovative ideas on teaching and then organized them in a thoughtful way, again, making it easy to find a creative tip on almost any topic.