Learning To Improve

As a field, education has largely failed to learn from experience. Time after time, promising education reforms fall short of their goals and are abandoned as other promising ideas take their place. In Learning to Improve, the authors argue for a new approach. Rather than “implementing fast and learning slow,” they believe educators should adopt a more rigorous approach to improvement that allows the field to “learn fast to implement well.” Using ideas borrowed from improvement science, the authors show how a process of disciplined inquiry can be combined with the use of networks to identify, adapt, and successfully scale up promising interventions in education. Organized around six core principles, the book shows how “networked improvement communities” can bring together researchers and practitioners to accelerate learning in key areas of education. Examples include efforts to address the high rates of failure among students in community college remedial math courses and strategies for improving feedback to novice teachers. Learning to Improve offers a new paradigm for research and development in education that promises to be a powerful driver of improvement for the nation’s schools and colleges.

Given the increased accountability at the college and university level, one of the most promising ways for faculty at institutions of higher education to improve their teaching is to capitalize upon their skills as researchers. This book is a step-by-step guide for doing research to inform and improve teaching and learning. With background and instruction about how to engage in these methodologies—including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods—Doing Research to Improve Teaching and Learning provides examples across disciplines of how to use one's research skills to improve teaching. This valuable resource equips faculty with the skills to collect and use different types of research evidence to improve teaching and learning in any college and university classroom. Special Features: Chapter openers highlight the questions and issues that will be addressed in each chapter. Recurring text boxes provide authentic examples from actual research studies, student work, and instructor reflections. Coverage of challenges, key successes, and lessons learned from classroom research presents a nuanced and complete understanding of the process.

Using Self-Assessment to Improve Student Learning synthesizes research on self-assessment and translates it into actionable guidelines and principles for pre-service and in-service teachers and for school leaders, teacher educators, and researchers. Situated beyond the simple how-to frameworks currently available for teachers and graduate students, this volume illuminates self-assessment’s complexities and substantial promise to strategically move students toward self-regulated learning and internalized goals. Addressing theory, empirical evidence, and common implementation issues, the book’s developmental approach to quality self-assessment practices will help teachers, leaders, and scholars maximize their impact on student self-regulation and learning.

Professional learning initiatives in schools come and go, and the constant cycling through programs can resemble fad diets--hype and hope followed by crash and burnout. In this timely book, professional learning providers Kasia M. Derbiszewska and T. Nicole Tucker-Smith share concrete strategies that will help you design professional development sessions that are compelling, convincing, and sustainable using the framework of Universal Design for Learning. Learn to recognize and reduce common barriers to effective PD. In each chapter, the authors clearly address the Purpose, Preparation, Implementation, and Benefits to Learning for each aspect of professional learning, as well as UDL Tidbits that help ensure the health and longevity of the initiative. If you are ready to take the leap toward creating healthy and sustainable professional learning, jump into the chapter that is most relevant to your needs. Get ready to consider the whole adult learner and apply practical strategies for cultivating and maintaining healthy, vibrant professional development that has a track record of success.

Despite feedback‘s demonstratively positive effects on student performance, research on the specific components of successful feedback practice is in short supply. In Using Feedback to Improve Learning, Ruiz-Primo and Brookhart offer critical characteristics of feedback strategies to affirm classroom feedback’s positive effect on student learning. The book provides pre- and in-service teachers as well as educational researchers with empirically supported techniques for using feedback as a part of formative assessment in the classroom.

American higher education needs a major reframing of student learning outcomes assessment Dynamic changes are underway in American higher education. New providers, emerging technologies, cost concerns, student debt, and nagging doubts about quality all call out the need for institutions to show evidence of student learning. From scholars at the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education presents a reframed conception and approach to student learning outcomes assessment. The authors explain why it is counterproductive to view collecting and using evidence of student accomplishment as primarily a compliance activity. Today's circumstances demand a fresh and more strategic approach to the processes by which evidence about student learning is obtained and used to inform efforts to improve teaching, learning, and decision-making. Whether you're in the classroom, an administrative office, or on an assessment committee, data about what students know and are able to do are critical for guiding changes that are needed in institutional policies and practices to improve student learning and success. Use this book to: Understand how and why student learning outcomes assessment can enhance student accomplishment and increase institutional effectiveness Shift the view of assessment from being externally driven to internally motivated Learn how assessment results can help inform decision-making Use assessment data to manage change and improve student success Gauging student learning is necessary if institutions are to prepare students to meet the 21st century needs of employers and live an economically independent, civically responsible life. For assessment professionals and educational leaders, Using Evidence of Student Learning to Improve Higher Education offers both a compelling rationale and practical advice for making student learning outcomes assessment more effective and efficient.

Praise for How Learning Works "How Learning Works is the perfect title for this excellent book. Drawing upon new research in psychology, education, and cognitive science, the authors have demystified a complex topic into clear explanations of seven powerful learning principles. Full of great ideas and practical suggestions, all based on solid research evidence, this book is essential reading for instructors at all levels who wish to improve their students' learning." —Barbara Gross Davis, assistant vice chancellor for educational development, University of California, Berkeley, and author, Tools for Teaching "This book is a must-read for every instructor, new or experienced. Although I have been teaching for almost thirty years, as I read this book I found myself resonating with many of its ideas, and I discovered new ways of thinking about teaching." —Eugenia T. Paulus, professor of chemistry, North Hennepin Community College, and 2008 U.S. Community Colleges Professor of the Year from The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education "Thank you Carnegie Mellon for making accessible what has previously been inaccessible to those of us who are not learning scientists. Your focus on the essence of learning combined with concrete examples of the daily challenges of teaching and clear tactical strategies for faculty to consider is a welcome work. I will recommend this book to all my colleagues." —Catherine M. Casserly, senior partner, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching "As you read about each of the seven basic learning principles in this book, you will find advice that is grounded in learning theory, based on research evidence, relevant to college teaching, and easy to understand. The authors have extensive knowledge and experience in applying the science of learning to college teaching, and they graciously share it with you in this organized and readable book." —From the Foreword by Richard E. Mayer, professor of psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara; coauthor, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction; and author, Multimedia Learning

Research has identified the importance of helping students develop the ability to monitor their own comprehension and to make their thinking processes explicit, and indeed demonstrates that metacognitive teaching strategies greatly improve student engagement with course material.This book -- by presenting principles that teachers in higher education can put into practice in their own classrooms -- explains how to lay the ground for this engagement, and help students become self-regulated learners actively employing metacognitive and reflective strategies in their education.Key elements include embedding metacognitive instruction in the content matter; being explicit about the usefulness of metacognitive activities to provide the incentive for students to commit to the extra effort; as well as following through consistently.Recognizing that few teachers have a deep understanding of metacognition and how it functions, and still fewer have developed methods for integrating it into their curriculum, this book offers a hands-on, user-friendly guide for implementing metacognitive and reflective pedagogy in a range of disciplines. Offering seven practitioner examples from the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, the social sciences and the humanities, along with sample syllabi, course materials, and student examples, this volume offers a range of strategies for incorporating these pedagogical approaches in college classrooms, as well as theoretical rationales for the strategies presented. By providing successful models from courses in a broad spectrum of disciplines, the editors and contributors reassure readers that they need not reinvent the wheel or fear the unknown, but can instead adapt tested interventions that aid learning and have been shown to improve both instructor and student satisfaction and engagement.