Enhancing Learning Design For Innovative Teaching In Higher Education

The higher education landscape is embracing the call to be innovative, yet scholars have not clearly defined what it means to innovate. Innovation is not limited to the use and adoption of educational technologies, and it encompasses a broad array of elements that must be considered if we are to truly aspire toward innovative teaching in higher education. Enhancing Learning Design for Innovative Teaching in Higher Education is a critical scholarly publication that examines how instructional systems design, instructional design, educational technologies, curriculum design, and program design impact innovation and innovative teaching in higher education. The book offers definitions of innovative teaching and examines critical intersections to achieve innovation and innovative teaching in post-secondary environments. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as program mapping and learning design, this book is essential for academicians, administrators, professionals, curriculum developers, instructional designers, K-12 teachers, educational technologists, researchers, and students.

This book highlights case studies and innovative teaching methods used by academics across the globe. It talks about how teaching staff should stimulate students’ active engagement in their own learning processes, and discusses the approach of implementing a project-based learning activity that integrates learning in an authentic manner.

The chapters document innovative teaching and learning practices within six areas: Engaging students through practice - Student-centred e-learning - Technology for learning - Simulation - Effective transformation - Curriculum innovations

This book focuses on selected best practices for effective active learning in Higher Education. Contributors present the epistemology of active learning along with specific case studies from different disciplines and countries. Discussing issues around ICTs, collaborative learning, experiential learning and other active learning strategies.

Innovative Teaching and Learning Practices in Higher Education takes a pedagogical, procedural, and practical approach to the development of innovative teaching and learning practices.

This book presents a wide selection of issues currently of interest and concern in higher education institutions in Ireland. The chapters are snapshots of the intersection between theory, practice and research in particular settings; they are not meant to be comprehensive. Nevertheless, they present practice approaches, new theoretical considerations and informal conversations, and include signposts to important literature in the area. The authors contextualise current concerns, and discuss how they have responded strategically to national and international trends in higher education. They also highlight how new roles and identities for staff and students in higher education have emerged in response to changes in institutional, social and technological contexts, among others. This book contains the following: (1) Higher Education in Ireland: Introduction (Bettie Higgs and Marian McCarthy); (2) Writing Identity through the Educational Developers in Ireland Network (EDIN) (Ciara O'Farrell); (3) Mature Cynics and Fledgling Eclectics: Elaborating Instructional Design for the Net Generation (David Jennings and Diane Cashman); (4) Promoting Integrative Learning in First-year Science (Bettie Higgs); (5) The Journey to High Level Performance: Using Knowledge on the Novice-Expert Trajectory to Enhance Higher Education Teaching (Sarah Moore, Geraldine O'Neill and Terry Barrett); (6) Integrating Concepts of Integrative Learning (Bettie Higgs and Brendan Hall); (7) Strategies for Implementing Group Work in Large Classes: Lessons from Enquiry-Based Learning (Geraldine O'Neill and Ivan Moore); (8) Supporting Graduate Teaching Assistants at Trinity College Dublin (Jacqueline Potter and Orla Hanratty); (9) Teaching for Understanding for Lecturers: Towards a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (Marian McCarthy); (10) Encouraging Student Creativity in Higher Education (Terry Barrett and Roisin Donnelly); (11) Reflections on Conversations as a Catalyst for Change 2003-2007 (Marion Palmer and Conor Heagney); (12) The Changing Role of the Academic Library in Learning and Teaching (Helen Fallon and Ellen Breen); and (13) The Role of a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in the Teaching of an Accredited Module in Information Literacy Skills (Claire McAvinia, Helen Fallon and Mairead McQuaid). Librarians' Reflections are appended. Each section contains tables, figures, and references.

Higher education is a particularly complex site for enhancement initiatives. This book offers those involved in change a coherent conceptual overview of enhancement approaches, of the change context, and of the probable interactions between them. The book sets enhancement within a particular type of change dynamic which focuses on social practices. The aim is to base innovation and change on the probabilities of desired outcomes materializing, rather than on the romanticism of policies that underestimate the sheer difficulty of making a difference. Following a theoretical introduction to these ideas, there are case studies (from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Norway) at the national, institutional, departmental and individual levels, illustrating the argument that enhancement is best achieved when it works with social practices in real institutional and organizational settings. In a final section, the authors link the case examples and theoretical frameworks, inviting readers to consider their own enhancement situations and apply the 'frameworks for action' offered in earlier sections of the book. The book doesn’t offer quick-fix solutions but aims to support change with practical examples, conceptual tools and reflexive questions for those involved in change at all levels. It is key reading for higher education lecturers, managers, educational developers and policy makers.

Education badly needs effective innovations that can help produce high-quality learning outcomes across the system. The primary focus of educational innovations should be on teaching and learning theory and practice, as well as on the learner, parent, community, society, and culture. Technology applications need a solid theoretical foundation based on purposeful, systemic research, and a sound pedagogy. Theoretical and Practical Approaches to Innovation in Higher Education is an essential scholarly publication that outlines the classification of innovations, discusses the hurdles to innovation, and offers ways to increase the scale and rate of innovation-based transformations in the education system. The publication argues that raising the quality and scale of innovations in education will positively affect education itself and benefit society. Highlighting topics such as academic integrity, e-learning, and learner engagement, this book is vital for higher education professionals, academicians, educators, librarians, course designers, researchers, and students.