CETL Archives
Book Talks Archive - Fall 2002
Scholarship in the Postmodern Era: New Venues, New Values, New Mission (2002)
Author: Kenneth Zahorski, editor
Date: Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002
Time: 2:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
Location: Atwood - Sauk Room
Facilitator: Fatemeh Zarghami, CFS
Description: Aimed at advancing the robust national conversation sparked a little over ten years ago by Ernest Boyer's Scholarship Reconsidered, this journal builds on Boyer's work. The first section focuses on practical reference and on new settings and circumstances in which the act of scholarship is being played out; the second identifies and explores the fresh set of values currently informing today's scholarly practices; and the third looks to the future of scholarship, identifying trends, causative factors, and potentialities that promise to shape scholars and their scholarship in the new millenium. One of the greatest lagacies of Scholarship Reconsidered is the advocacy of a more holistic and humane approach to promoting, evaluating, and rewarding scholarship.
Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives (2002)
Author: Janet Gail Donald
Date: Nov. 14, 2002
Time: 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Location: Atwood - N. Voyageurs Room
Facilitators: Pat Heine (TDEV), John Hoover (SPED), & Michael
Pickle (SPED)
Description: Written by a leading researcher in
the field of post-secondary teaching and learning, Learning
to Think is the first book to explore how knowledge
and thinking processes are linked in specific disciplines. The author
offers you an essential aid for helping students develop the ability
to conceptualize, analyze, and reason across and within academic
disciplines. Pooling her 18 years of research into one essential
guide, the author discusses how learning occurs in selected disciplines,
and how educators can improve the teaching and learning process in
their classrooms. The book offers an unprecedented paradigm that
reveals how students develop the ability to retrieve, relate and
use their knowledge. The book will serve as a model for improvement
in higher education.
The author first creates a framework for understanding student intellectual
development and for learning to think in different disciplines. In
succeeding chapters, she describes the principal methods in inquiry
in each discipline and how their effects on learning to think, examining
what this means for students and how we might use it to improve the
instructional process.
About the author: Janet Donald is professor in the Center for University Teaching and Learning at the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology at McGill University. Her research has focused on the quality of postsecondary learning and teaching, particularly on fostering higher- order learning.
Tools for Teaching
Author: Barbara Gross Davis
Date: Tuesday, Dec.3, 2002
Time: 11:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Location: Atwood - St. Croix Room
Facilitators: Mary Clifford (Criminal Justice)
Karen Thoms(Substituted)
Description of Book: In the continuing debate over how to improve the quality of undergraduate education, two questions are of central importance: what should be taught? and How can that curriculum best be taught? Tools for Teaching addresses the latter question by providing a compendium of teaching strategies that focus on the major aspects of college and university teaching - from planning a course through assigning final grades.
The aim of this book is to encourage faculty to become more aware
of how they teach and how they might teach more effectively, and
to provide them with the tools for doing so. New faculty members
who are teaching for the first time will find reassuring suggestions
on how to design and offer a new course, how to write and grade an
exam, and how to attend to the range of responsibilities involved
in teaching and managing a large lecture course. Experienced faculty
members who are faced with thorny teaching problems or are concerned
about burning out or getting stale will find descriptions of various
ways to revitalize their courses. Graduate student instructors and
teaching assistants can also benifit from the ideas described in Tools....
Tools... is a practical source book designed
as a reference book; it focuses on options and alternatives rather
than theoretical underpinnings.
Point of information: The FCTE within recent years
has given copies of this book to new probationary faculty members;
last year MnSCU CTL gave a copy of this book to all new
probationary faculty in its entire system; this year, MnSCU CTL
will once again provide copies of this book to all new
probationary faculty members (should be delivered in early-mid
Nov.).
Learner Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice (2002)
Author: Maryellen Weimer
Date: Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002
Time: 2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Location: Atwood - North Voyageurs
Facilitator: Margery Whites (CDIS) and Linda Scott
Halverson (TDEV)
Description : Written by one of the country's best
known and most highly regarded authorities on effective college teaching,
the book presents you with clear, compelling evidence for tying teacher
and curriculum to the process and objectives of learning rather than
to the task of delivering content.
The reader will see differentiation between teacher-centered and
learner-centered instruction. This comprehensive work guides the
reader through all aspects of the meaning, practice, and ramifications
of learner-centered teaching.
Weimer also offers advice for educators making the transition to
a learner-centered approach to teaching. Dr. Weimer was the keynote
speaker for the Faculty Workshop Day, April 2000.
