Higher Education Observer

This article appeared in Inside Higher Ed (a favorite publication of mine).  I think it has some valid information. Having started a teaching and learning center myself, I have a lot of opinions on the process.  I also wrote my doctoral dissertation on faculty (educational) development, so I kind of know a little about this. The T and L director (or whatever other title has been given to the lead professional development person) has to be winsome about bringing faculty--from all disciplines, not just the one that the director may represent--into the center.  Part of this winsomeness is balancing evangelism of a particular pedagogy or even trendy practice with appreciation of what the faculty are already doing.  Any time you ask a person to change you must guarantee that the benefit of the change will be greater than the cost. If a teacher who primarily lectures (oh, my, no!) has good results from the students in terms of learning outcomes and test results (or ...

For anyone who stumbles across this blog and cares to know, this is who I am:  Professor of Communication at Dalton State College and Chair of the Department of Communication, which in our case encompasses performing arts (theatre and music), foreign languages (French and Spanish), and communication.  I am also Editor of the Journal for Academic Excellence , a publication of our Center for Academic Excellence (Teaching and Learning or Faculty Development Center).  Follow this link to find it; there are some really good articles in it, but our pipeline has dried up.   Campus Champion for Open Educational Resources and Affordable Learning Georgia and co-author of Exploring Public Speaking:  The Free Dalton State College Public Speaking Book with Dr. Kris Barton (free PDF download, but it's a big file) Immediate Past President of the Georgia Communication Association Former Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs (Interim) 2015 Ed.D. graduate of ...

Yesterday I spoke at a conference (very good one!) on Faculty Creation of Open Educational R e sources because a colleague and I wrote a textbook for a basic public speaking course.  I will be posting about it and my talk in the future (working on lengthy article which I'll post in parts) but I wanted to post this list of references for those who need help with the question of research that has been done on student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction, and achievement of learning outcomes with open educational resources.    • Azevedo , A.  (2013, February 1).  Pay nothing?  Easier said than done.  Chronicle of Higher Education, 59 (21), A18-A19 . • Allen, G., Guzman-Alvarez, A., Smith, A., Gamage , A., Molinaro , M., & Larsen, D. S. (2015). Evaluating the effectiveness of the open-access ChemWiki resource as a replacement for traditional general chemistry textbooks. Chemistry Education Research And Practice , 16 (4), 939 . • Allen, I....