Creating Value

“Doubts about higher education’s value are a clarion call to create more value, more equitably, by retaining and graduating millions more career-ready students,” write Penny MacCormack, ACUE’s chief academic officer; Kevin Reilly, senior fellow with the Association of Governing Boards; and David Brailow, vice president of the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC).

In a new article featured in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, the authors draw on a wide body of evidence and the experiences of the CIC/ACUE Consortium for Instructional Excellence to argue that it is faculty, when prepared and supported to teach well, who actually “create and deliver” higher education’s value. 

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News in Brief

Want to Reach All of Your Students? Here’s How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive
The role of a college instructor is “to help students feel included and ready to thrive,” according to Viji Sathy and Kelly Hogan. With so many backgrounds and experiences represented in their courses, faculty have the opportunity to build a diverse set of thinkers and problem-solvers, they write. They also offer strategies for inclusive teaching, such as structuring small-group discussions, giving plenty of low-stakes assignments, and becoming comfortable with silence in the classroom. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Top 10 Tools for Learning
Based on Jane Hart’s Top Tools for Learning, Bonni Stachowiak shares her own top learning tools. They include Pinboard for saving bookmarks to videos and more, PollEverywhere for surveying students, Zoom for web conferencing, and others. (Teaching in Higher Ed)

How to Start Off Right in Your New Job
Manya Whitaker offers advice for beginning a faculty position, including reviewing the department’s website and procedures, setting up an office to ensure that it’s comfortable for meeting with students as well as conducive to working, performing a self-assessment analyzing professional needs, confirming the teaching schedule, and drafting a syllabus. (Vitae)

‘Why Do We Have So Many Freaking Acronyms?!’ Some Colleges Target Jargon in the Name of Student Success
According to many surveys and higher education professionals, college jargon can be difficult to navigate, especially for first-generation students and their families. That’s why some colleges are attempting to address the problem. For example, the University of Georgia mails a jargon handbook in multiple languages to first-generation students, while others are asking for student input on how faculty should communicate. (The Chronicle of Higher Education — paywall)

Diving Deeper Into What 6 Million Syllabi Say About Higher Education
The Open Syllabus Project from Columbia University gathers six million syllabi from around the world, enabling instructors to access and search them. It also highlights the texts and materials that are most frequently taught. The project has sparked some controversy and debate due to the nature of some of the widely-used texts. (EdSurge)

The Problem With Diversity Questions
Rather than asking faculty candidates general questions about diversity, interviewers should ask specific questions about teaching and learning, especially as the subject pertains to disadvantaged students, argues Alex Small. The general approach, he writes, leads to discussions about controversial social issues, rather than focusing on what faculty should really value: teaching students. (Inside Higher Ed)

How to Design Online Courses That Are Full of Surprises
Using Derek Bruff’s principle of “time for telling,” Bonni Stachowiak explores how to ignite students’ curiosity by presenting a problem and then motivating them to listen to the explanation. She also suggests additional methods of “mixing it up” in courses, such as having students design videos and inviting them to participate in group annotating of texts. (EdSurge)