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Chapter two examines the effects of too much teacher control and its adverse effects on student motivation, confidence, and enthusiasm for learning. Students are more likely to become self-regulated learners when some of the conditions of their learning are more in their control. Weimer does not advocate abandoning our professional responsibility and letting students determine course content or whether they will do assignments; instead she recommends that teachers establish parameters within which their students will select options. Increasing the decisions students can make about assignments and activities more fully engages them in the course and its content. Among Weimer’s suggestions are providing a variety of assignments to demonstrate learning the course outcomes (students choose a combination), negotiating policies about class participation, and letting students choose which material the teacher will review in class the period before a major test. 

. The function of content in a learner-centered course changes from covering content to using content

describes the changed role of the teacher in a learner-centered classroom from sage on stage to guide on the side

Know that students have a variety of learning styles. student-centered instruction is not a panacea; some students will, in fact, simply work better with a faculty-centered instruction approach. But the times they are, indeed, changing, and by placing more of the learning process on the students you offer students more options to explore and expand their own learning capabilities.

Harvard’s annual cost for journals from these providers now approaches $3.75M. In 2010, the comparable amount accounted for more than 20% of all periodical subscription costs and just under 10% of all collection costs for everything the Library acquires. Some journals cost as much as $40,000 per year, others in the tens of thousands.

ibrary, representing university faculty in all schools and in consultation with the Harvard Library leadership,  reached this conclusion: major periodical subscriptions, especially to electronic journals published by historically key providers, cannot be sustained: continuing these subscriptions on their current footing is financially untenable. Doing so would seriously erode collection efforts in many other areas, already compromised.

The Faculty Advisory Council to th

Students are empowered to learn on their own and even to teach one another.

Students served as instructors to their classmates, and together they worked toward learning goals more effectively than if they had been provided with the answer by the instructor.

One online instructor (Alley 1996) has described this changing pedagogical consciousness as an �instructional epiphany�.� Alley tells of a personal transformation, stimulated by online instruction, marked by two "milestones". First, he had to totally redesign his course to fit and leverage the new learning environment. Second, he had to rethink what he calls his �basic approach�: �As long as I held on to the traditional �sage-on-stage� style of teaching, I would keep reinventing ways for students to be a passive audience� (1996:51).� Similar changes in pedagogical belief and practice have been reported by other faculty who have taught web-based courses (Brown 1998; Jaffee 1997; Cremer 1998) as well as researchers who have interviewed online instructors (Frank 2000).�� There are clearly some �structural constraints� built into the virtual classroom ecology that make it difficult to implement traditional modes of delivery and, in this sense, almost force instructors to entertain active learning strategies. As Frank (2000) discovered in her study of online instructors, "All of the participants saw online learning as empowering for students. The most valuable benefits were the facilitation of active learning, critical thinking, collaboration, confidence, and lifelong learning habits. A common theme was the way in which the teacher is forced to give up the control that one has in a face-to-face environment and re-examine the traditional role of content deliverer".� Just as the physical classroom architecture imposes constraints on, and opportunities for, particular pedagogical practices, so too does the virtual classroom. John Seely Brown (2000) has described the environment of the world-wide-web as a �learning ecology� that is a self-organized evolving collection of cross-pollinating overlapping communities of interest.� Asynchronous web-based courses that include a discussion forum possess many of the same ecological features. All members of the class can receive and broadcast information at any time. This critical communication feature distinguishes the virtual classroom from prior forms of instructional technology.�� While instructors can mediate and guide, they cannot entirely control the flow of communication. Thus, instructor and student roles and relations are less hierarchical and more overlapping and interactive. These greater opportunities for participation can contribute to a greater diversity of opinion and perspective. It is hard work to establish these social dynamics in a physical classroom constrained by a fixed space, a designated time block, and trained inhibitions. The virtual classroom, in contrast, has the potential to establish new patterns of instructor and student interaction and, accordingly, different teaching and learning roles and practices (Girod and Cavanaugh 2001; Becker and Ravitz 1999). ��������� In making comparisons between the physical and virtual classroom, it is important to emphasize a cautionary caveat. The pedagogical ecology, be it a physical classroom or a virtual interface, cannot entirely determine a particular pedagogical practice or learning outcome. The pedagogical ecology offers opportunities and constraints that will shape and influence classroom dynamics and learning outcomes, but much will also depend on the principles informing, and the actual design of, the teaching and learning process (see Chamberlin 2001). The various practices that are employed in both a physical and a virtual classroom indicate the range of possibilities. However, if we believe that, for the purpose of student learning, active student engagement and interaction is preferable to the passive reception of information, we should consider the degree to which this principle is advanced or facilitated by the expanding virtual learning ecology.�

Sociological theories and concepts have an important role to play in analyzing and interpreting these developments. A central sociological proposition is that structural environments influence the social perceptions, roles, and relations of human actors.� As increasing numbers of students and faculty find themselves operating in virtual learning environments, we might also expect to find some changing instructional dynamics. More specifically, there are a number of questions worth exploring. What are the relationships between the technical, the social, and the pedagogical infrastructures?� How has the introduction of new instructional technologies influenced established pedagogical practices? How does the shift from a physical classroom to a virtual learning environment shape and reconfigure the social roles and relations among faculty and students? What consequences will these technologies have for developing pedagogical practices?

have less to do with the proven effectiveness of the particular practice than the desire to appear legitimate or conform to normative expectations.�

Researchers found that the few who focus primarily on teaching tend to share certain characteristics - including teaching without tenure.

A recent study by the University of Michigan on the work experiences of non-tenure track faculty found that one of their most common reasons for entering the profession was 'a love of teaching.'

Nevertheless, academic culture seems to prioritize research over teaching. Graduate assistants teaching undergraduate classrooms with hundreds of students and infamous practices like 'publish or perish' all point to a system designed to sacrifice quality instruction for research pursuits. As Boyer argued back in 1990, academia and its students would be better served by treating instruction as an equally valuable pursuit.