What The Best College Students Do

The author of the best-selling What the Best College Teachers Do is back with more humane, doable, and inspiring help, this time for students who want to get the most out of college—and every other educational enterprise, too. The first thing they should do? Think beyond the transcript. The creative, successful people profiled in this book—college graduates who went on to change the world we live in—aimed higher than straight A’s. They used their four years to cultivate habits of thought that would enable them to grow and adapt throughout their lives. Combining academic research on learning and motivation with insights drawn from interviews with people who have won Nobel Prizes, Emmys, fame, or the admiration of people in their field, Ken Bain identifies the key attitudes that distinguished the best college students from their peers. These individuals started out with the belief that intelligence and ability are expandable, not fixed. This led them to make connections across disciplines, to develop a “meta-cognitive” understanding of their own ways of thinking, and to find ways to negotiate ill-structured problems rather than simply looking for right answers. Intrinsically motivated by their own sense of purpose, they were not demoralized by failure nor overly impressed with conventional notions of success. These movers and shakers didn’t achieve success by making success their goal. For them, it was a byproduct of following their intellectual curiosity, solving useful problems, and taking risks in order to learn and grow.

Winner of the Virginia and Warren Stone Prize awarded annually by Harvard University Press for an outstanding book on education and society What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn.

From the bestselling author of What the Best College Teachers Do, the story of a new breed of amazingly innovative courses that inspire students and improve learning Decades of research have produced profound insights into how student learning and motivation can be unleashed—and it’s not through technology or even the best of lectures. In Super Courses, education expert and bestselling author Ken Bain tells the fascinating story of enterprising college, graduate school, and high school teachers who are using evidence-based approaches to spark deeper levels of learning, critical thinking, and creativity—whether teaching online, in class, or in the field. Visiting schools across the United States as well as in China and Singapore, Bain, working with his longtime collaborator, Marsha Marshall Bain, uncovers super courses throughout the humanities and sciences. At the University of Virginia, undergrads contemplate the big questions that drove Tolstoy—by working with juveniles at a maximum-security correctional facility. Harvard physics students learn about the universe not through lectures but from their peers in a class where even reading is a social event. And students at a Dallas high school use dance to develop growth mindsets—and many of them go on to top colleges, including Juilliard. Bain defines these as super courses because they all use powerful researched-based elements to build a “natural critical learning environment” that fosters intrinsic motivation, self-directed learning, and self-reflective reasoning. Complete with sample syllabi, the book shows teachers how they can build their own super courses. The story of a hugely important breakthrough in education, Super Courses reveals how these classes can help students reach their full potential, equip them to lead happy and productive lives, and meet the world’s complex challenges.

Draws on years of research and interviews with undergraduates to explore the choices students make to obtain an enriching college experience.

With a unique focus on the relationship between assessment and engagement this book explores what works in terms of keeping students on course to succeed. Against a backdrop of massification and the associated increase in student diversity there is an escalating requirement for personalized, technology driven learning in higher education. In addition, the advent of student fees has promoted a consumer culture resulting in students having an increasingly powerful voice in shaping curricula to their own requirements. How does one engage and retain a group of students of such diverse culture, ethnicity, ambition and experience? Using examples from a variety of institutions worldwide this edited collection provides a well-researched evidence base of current thinking and developments in assessment practices in higher education. The chapters discuss: Staff and student views on assessment Engaging students through assessment feedback Assessment for learning Assessing for employability Interdisciplinary and transnational assessment Technology supported assessment for retention The book draws together a wealth of expertise from a range of contributors including academic staff, academic developers, pedagogical researchers, National Teaching Fellows and Centres for Excellence in Higher Education. Recognising that a pedagogy which is embedded and taken-for-granted in one context might be completely novel in another, the authors share best practice and evaluate evidence of assessment strategies to enable academic colleagues to make informed decisions about adopting new and creative approaches to assessment. This interdisciplinary text will prove an invaluable tool for those working and studying in higher education.

Although the average college student spends only between 15 and 18 hours in class in any given week, increasing the amount of free time, there is a correlating increase in the workload. Many college students never learned effective study habits in high school and believe they will be able to make it through college just as easily. However, college and university professors and administrators claim that studying is directly connected to a student s ultimate success or failure. By reading 101 Ways to Make Studying Easier and Faster for College Students, you can improve the effectiveness of your studying. After all, effectiveness is not measured by the length of time spent studying or blankly staring at a textbook but by the level of comprehension. In this new book, you will learn how to make a study schedule, how to design an effective study environment, how to read for comprehension, how to get organized, how to find your learning style, how to take notes during lectures, how to listen better in class, how to use reference sources, how to boost your concentration, how to stay motivated, how to review and edit your notes, and how to increase reading comprehension. You will learn effective note taking strategies, where to study, when to study, time management skills, strategies for reading novels and text books, memorization techniques, and organizational skills. Additionally, you will find out how to stay awake while studying, how to change your current habits, and how to make studying more enjoyable. We will provide you with various studying methods, including flashcards, quizzes, summarizing, outlining, answering study guide questions, and the proven SQ3R method, as well as exercises to help improve your skills. Furthermore, 101 Ways to Make Studying Easier and Faster for College Students is full of tips from students just like you, as well as professors. No two people learn the same way, and no one study method will work for everyone. While this book introduces you to different study methods, the aim is to improve your learning, your understanding, and, ultimately, your grades. Atlantic Publishing is a small, independent publishing company based in Ocala, Florida. Founded over twenty years ago in the company president s garage, Atlantic Publishing has grown to become a renowned resource for non-fiction books. Today, over 450 titles are in print covering subjects such as small business, healthy living, management, finance, careers, and real estate. Atlantic Publishing prides itself on producing award winning, high-quality manuals that give readers up-to-date, pertinent information, real-world examples, and case studies with expert advice. Every book has resources, contact information, and web sites of the products or companies discussed.

Straight talk and tips from top students to help make academic excellence a lifestyle. Getting a passing grade is one thing—cramming to memorize facts, knowing what's on the test, finishing a paper just before the deadline—but being a top student is something else entirely. So what makes the difference between a good student and a top student? Being a top student is a lifestyle, not just an A on your transcript. The Secrets of Top Students: Tips, Tools, and Techniques for Acing High School and College offers advice from lifelong top student, Stefanie Weisman, to help you learn the keys to studying smart, staying motivated, and making academic excellence a part of your life. Tips from 45 Top Students Learn strategies on making the grade with first-hand advice from valedictorians, Rhodes scholars, Fulbright scholars, Intel Science Fair finalists, a National Spelling bee champion, and more! Lifestyle Tips and Techniques Discover tips and mantras that will keep you on the road to academic success. Helpful Exercises Practice makes perfect. Put what you've learned to the test with easy exercises on taking notes, staying motivated, and more.

"This book is for teachers who have good days and bad -- and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life." - Parker J. Palmer [from the Introduction] Teachers choose their vocation for reasons of the heart, because they care deeply about their students and about their subject. But the demands of teaching cause too many educators to lose heart. Is it possible to take heart in teaching once more so that we can continue to do what good teachers always do -- give heart to our students? In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with their vocation and their students -- and recovering their passion for one of the most difficult and important of human endeavors.