From Brain to Mind: Using Neuroscience to Guide Change in Education

by James E. Zull (Stylus, 2011).

If you are familiar with James Zull's 2004 book, The Art of Changing the Brain, you know he has both a keen interest in how the brain learns and a knack for making specialized research accessible and relatable to what we do in higher education.  In his latest book, Zull (Professor of Biochemistry and former Director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education at Case Western Reserve)considers how recent findings in neuroscience can inform our teaching practice.  Looking at how the brain receives and processes information, he gleans applicable insights about cognitive development and metacognition.  Zull argues that due to major social and economic change, a teaching and learning approach that is informed by cognitive science is increasingly necessary.  In an environment in which our students can expect to hold multiple jobs (some of which may not yet exist), where technology is constantly shifting, and where information and opinion seem infinitely available, the awareness of how and why we think as we do is essential to society's well-being.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Anne Kelsch , 777-4233.

How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching

by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman (Jossey-Bass, 2010)

From the publisher: Distilling the research literature and translating the scientific approach into language relevant to a college or university teacher, this book introduces seven general principles of how students learn. The authors have drawn on research from a breadth of perspectives (cognitive, developmental, and social psychology; educational research; anthropology; demographics; organizational behavior) to identify a set of key principles underlying learning, from how effective organization enhances retrieval and use of information to what impacts motivation. Integrating theory with real-classroom examples in practice, this book helps faculty to apply cognitive science advances to improve their own teaching.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS please contact Kathleen Vacek , University Writing Program coordinator, 777-6381.

Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses

by Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa (University of Chicago, 2011)

From the buzz its publication generated, including reviews in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and The New York Times, it is clear that this is an important book for academics to understand and take into account. Aram and Roksa followed 2,300 students at 24 universities over a four-year period and analyzed their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) and the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)—both of which are administered to UND students by Institutional Research. In the most reductionist sense, the book argues that students don't study very much and therefore don't learn very much. This should not surprise faculty who have been complaining for years that students don't spend enough time doing course work. On the other hand, the scope of the problem is surprising: for example, the authors observed "no statistically significant gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills for at least 45 percent of the students in our study" during the first two years of college and over one third of students who complete four years of college show no improvement in critical thinking skills. Aram and Roksaalso postulate that a lack of rigor and low faculty expectations are part of the problem.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Anne Kelsch, 777-4233.

Successful Science and Engineering Teaching in Colleges and Universities

by Calvin S. Kalman (Jossey-Bass, 2006)

This book offers broad, practical strategies for teaching science and engineering courses and describes how faculty can provide a learning environment that helps students comprehend the nature of science, understand science concepts, and solve problems in science courses.

The student-centered approach focuses on two main themes: reflective writing and working in collaborative groups. When faculty incorporate methods into their courses that challenge their students to critically reflect, collaborate, and problem solve, students gain a better understanding of science as a connected structure of concepts rather than as a simple tool kit of assorted practices.

Contents include:

Reflective writingWriting to learnConstructing student knowledgeSelected methods for using collaborative groupsChanging students' epistemologiesTraining students to solve problemsUsing technology to aid your teaching

If you are interested in participating in this FSS please contact Kathleen Vacek, University Writing Program coordinator, 777-6381.

Good Mentoring: Fostering Excellent Practice in Higher Education

by Jeanne Nakamura andDavid Shernoff with Charles Hooker (Jossey-Bass, 2009)

Mentoring students is an important part of our role asfaculty members. We mentor students both formally and informally through our interactions, but what messages are we passing on to the next generation of scholars? Nakamura and Shernoff studied three different successful academics that had been deemed to be "good mentors". The authors studied not only the academics but also several generations of their students to understand what ideals and practices had been passed on and how these traits were communicated. This book presents a way of looking at mentoring more objectively, and is a good jumping off point for discussing our own mentoring practices. Although the lead academics chosen for this book are all in the natural sciences, with a focus on graduate mentoring, the ideas discussed are applicable to most disciplines and to both graduate andundergraduate mentoring. Other specific mentoring topics that could be explored include gender roles in mentoring relationships and the challenges of placing boundaries in the age of socialmedia.

If you are interested in participating in this FSS, please contact Gretchen Mullendore, 777-4707.

Helping Faculty Find Work-Life Balance: The Path Toward Family-Friendly Institutions

by Maike Ingrid Philipsen and Timothy B. Bostic (2010, Jossey-Bass)

If you laughed out loud when reading the words "faculty" and "work-life balance" in the title of a single book, or if you are one of the more optimistic among us, we hope you'll join us to read this book and discuss issues of dual career couples, parenting, and living an academic life.

From the publisher: "Helping Faculty Find Work-Life Balance gives voice to faculty and reveals the myriad personal and professional issues faculty face over the span of their academic careers. Based on years of in-the-field research and two gender-based studies, Maike Ingrid Philipsen and Timothy Bostic give the issue of work-life balance a fresh perspective by taking a comparative approach to the topic in regard to both gender and career stage. The authors' research reports on the experiences of male and female faculty at early-, mid-, and late-career stages. In addition, the book goes beyond the typical 'family-friendly' approach and takes an all-encompassing 'life-friendly' view, recognizing the need to strive for balance in the lives of all faculty members.

Philipsen and Bostic describe enablers and obstacles that faculty encounter during their careers and how policies and programs might more effectively address the needs of faculty. Helping Faculty Find Work-Life Balance is filled with illustrative cases from exemplary institutions to showcase what they are doing to reform the system."

This FSS will be co-facilitated by Joe and Kathleen Vacek. To participate, contact Kathleen Vacek, 777-6381.

The Challenge of Bologna: What US Higher Education Has to Learn from Europe, and Why It Matters That We Learn It

by Paul L. Gaston. (2010, Stylus)

What is the "Bologna Process"? Why are faculty talking about "tuning"? And what does this have to do with teaching and learning at UND? These are questions we will address through conversations about The Challenge of Bologna.

But here is the backdrop to the book. Faculty everywhere – including in Europe – are facing ever-growing numbers of transfer students. Students tell horror stories of accumulating 150 or 180 credits from four or five different (accredited) colleges, but being unable to graduate because each college rejects many of the equivalencies accepted by some or all of the others. A mini-scandal was provoked this fall when a report documented nonsensical transfer policies applicable to public institutions within a single city. And transfer is only one aspect of the problem. Politicians and employers claim that it's impossible to know what a degree in Physics or History means. What will those grads know? What can they do? Can anything be taken for granted?

Europe is confronting these challenges through a process called "tuning," and tuning projects are already being piloted in several states. As we read about the European model – and our counterpart – we will consider implications for UND and for the U.S. more generally. If you are interested in thinking about the future of higher education, you will want to read this book.

This FSS will be facilitated by Joan Hawthorne. To participate, contact her at 777-4684.

Teaching for Understanding at University: Deep Approaches and Distinctive Ways of Thinking

by Noel Entwistle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Written for teachers across disciplines, Teaching for Understanding at University concentrates on how students reach a personal understanding of the subject they are studying. In the introduction Entwistle states that changes in the academic world mean that teachers "are facing problems for which agreed solutions can no longer be expected, and so we have to think for ourselves and adjust quickly to new conditions." To facilitate that process, he offers "a way of thinking about how teaching affects learning" and "a range of concepts and principles that allow academics to think about pedagogic issues in a more precise way." Ultimately, Entwistle's aim is to encourage a "broad, integrative way of thinking," a "deep understanding" not just focussed on the study topics, but on their implications for life in general. Covering academic understanding, teaching approaches, assessment methods and evaluation of teaching, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the latest ideas on teaching and learning.

If interested in this Faculty Study Seminar contact Anne Kelsch, 777-4233.

Teaching Writing Online: How and Why

by Scott Warnock (National Council of English Teachers, 2009).

The fastest growing student population at UND is online. To meet this demand, more and more faculty are developing online courses and redeveloping face-to-face courses for online delivery. What is the best way to coach a writing assignment delivered online? How can you migrate your face-to-face teaching practices into an online environment? Scott Warnock draws on his experience teaching online writing courses to provide guidelines for managing online conversations, responding to students, and organizing course material. Warnock proposes that online writing instruction is more than just a trend; it offers faculty an opportunity to put composition theory and practice to work in their teaching. Instructors new to online teaching and experienced teachers looking to improve their practices will find useful ideas for teaching the writing components of an online course.

If interested in this Faculty Study Seminar contact Kathleen Vacek, 777-6381.

 

Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities

by William Bowen, Matthew Chingos and Michael McPherson (Princeton University Press, 2009).

America's public universities enroll a high percentage of the college attending population-- about two-thirds of all full-time students seeking B.A.'s and more than three-fourths of all students in four-year programs. Long revered for their dedication to equal opportunity and affordability, public universities like UND play a crucial role in building human capital. And yet less than 60 percent of the students entering four-year colleges today graduate. Bowen, Chingos and Mc Pherson try to shed light on this reality by probing graduation rates at twenty-one flagship universities and four statewide systems of higher education. The conclusions are compelling. The President of the American Council on Education noted, "Crossing the Finish Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the disturbing fact that Americans can no longer count on each generation being better educated than the last."

If interested in this Faculty Study Seminar contact Joan Hawthorne, 777-4684

Teaching What You Don't Know

by Therese Huston (Harvard University Press, 2009).

Your graduate work was on bacterial evolution, but now you're lecturing to 200 freshmen on primate social life. You've taught Kant for twenty years, but now you're team-teaching a new course on "Ethics and the Internet." The personality theorist retired and wasn't replaced, so now you, the neuroscientist, have to teach the "Sexual Identity" course. Everyone in academia knows it and no one likes to admit it: faculty often have to teach courses in areas they don't know very well. The challenges are even greater when students don't share your cultural background, lifestyle, or assumptions about how to behave in a classroom. This practical book offers many creative strategies for dealing with typical problems. Encouraging faculty to think of themselves as learners rather than as experts, Huston points out that authority in the classroom doesn't come only, or even mostly, from perfect knowledge.

The Learning Paradigm College

by John Tagg (Jossey-Bass, 2003).

Tagg's book begins with a simple but profound question: "What are colleges for?" Noting that typically "the successful college . . . is the one that fills classes with students and thus grows in enrollment," Tagg advocates for a paradigm shift towards a learning centered environment that attends to students rather that classes and he documents how this is happening at some institutions. Tagg argues that to change our paradigm from teaching to learning is to view education through a new lens—"seeing" our work in a different light and having diverse experiences as we and our students interact to learn. Reviewers refer to The Learning Paradigm College as "one of the most important, provocative, and accessible works to have entered the higher education literature in many years, . . . it is broadly applicable to every postsecondary institution."

If you are interested in reading this book as part of a Faculty Study Seminar, contact Anne Kelsch, 777-4233

Respite for Teachers: Reflection and renewal in the teaching life. Ann Arbor

by Casanave, C.P. & Sosa, M. (2007) University of Michigan Press.

Casanave and Sosa's book is not designed to teach something new; instead, the purpose of the book is to inspire faculty to spend time reflecting on the joys and challenges of teaching and of connecting with students and colleagues. The authors cover a wide variety of diverse topics, including a comparison of teaching and musical groups, difficult students, fear and curiosity, grading, mentoring, solitude, as well as a chapter about students who "just don't seem to belong where they are." Most of these chapters are designed to both raise an important issue and inspire at the same time. One reviewer noted that while the book is accessible and avoids jargon and terminology it "is very much grounded in theory and does an excellent job encouraging ... teachers and researchers to think about how to reduce the gap between theory and research and classroom practice."

If you are interested in reading this book as part of a Faculty Study Seminar, contact Scott Baxter, 777-6381

Discussion as a Way of Teaching: Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms

2nd ed. by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill (Jossey-Bass, 2005)

Brookfield and Preskill have written this 2nd edition of their book for all teachers and leaders who use discussion to help people learn. One book synopsis states "Brookfield and Preskill clearly show how discussion can enliven classrooms, and they outline practical methods for ensuring that students will come to class prepared to discuss a topic. They also explain how to balance the voices of students and teachers, while still preserving the moral, political, and pedagogic integrity

of discussion." This revised edition includes new material related to the use of discussion for online teaching, as part of democratic participation, and theoretical foundations for the use of discussion. So if you're interested in the use of discussion in the university classroom, this book can provide practical, usable tools to either get you started or enhance your current practice.

If you are interested in reading this book as part of a Faculty Study Seminar, contact Sonia Zimmerman, 777-2200

Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom

by John C. Bean (Jossey-Bass, 1996)

John Bean designed Engaging Ideas as a nuts-and-bolts handbook for instructors who want to successfully integrate writing into their courses. Bean explains the fundamental link between critical thinking and writing in the classroom, and provides several strategies on how to address these concerns: "The goal of these activities is to transform students from passive to active learners, deepening their understanding of subject matter while helping them learn the thinking

process of the discipline: how members of the discipline ask questions, conduct inquiries, gather and analyze data and make arguments." Bean gives practical advice on every state in the writing process— from designing an assignment to offering feedback. This book is a great starting place for faculty interested in practical advice on how to use writing and critical thinking successfully in the classroom.

If you are interested in reading this book as part of a Faculty Study Seminar, contact Kathleen Vacek, 777-6381