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An article in EDUCAUSE by Randy Bass. The article is about how the formal curriculum is being disrupted as "high-impact educational practices" and "the experiential co-curriculum" move from the margins of higher education into common practice. He also addresses how the current "participatory culture " and the trend toward "informal learning" are affecting the curriculum. The article concludes with recommendations for instructors on how they can change their teaching practices to "keep pace with our expanded understanding of learning." - the description provided by Christopher Price, Director, Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT), The College at Brockport, State University of New York.

"Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We've written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students' progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don't perform well on the learning experiences we've designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it's important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance. This provides for consistent structural support, when required (Hogan & Pressley, 1997)."

Brand new article that just came out in the Higher Education Research and Development journal. It features researchers from La Trobe University in Australia, but may be of interest to people at the U of S.

This website is from the Institute for Teaching and Learning at the University of Sydney. It features the work of Simon Barrie on graduate attributes, which is particularly interesting and important for units working on curriculum development.

This is the website for the Student Course Experience Questionnaire (SCEQ), deisgned to provide the University community with a basis for strategic, faculty level academic development and curriculum review to further enhance the quality of teaching and student learning.

CLASSE is a version of the National Survey of Student Engagement that is designed to be used at the level of an individual course. It is free to use, but requires a note to be sent to the developers (as per the instructions on the website.

From the American Psychological Association, this online resource and guide covers how to assess student learning outcomes for program review based on stated learning goals. "We have organized this Cyberguide into four parts that will assist departments in developing assessment plans: A. Understanding Assessment: Departmental, Institutional, Educational, and Societal Perspectives B. Designing Viable Assessment Plans C. Sustaining an Assessment Culture D. Applying Assessment Strategies in Psychology"

"Students pay many thousands of dollars for a college education in order to prepare themselves for the job market. If the college or university is providing the wrong stuff, that's a poor investment for the students."

"The resources listed here can provide you with some quick ideas on key teaching topics or starting points to explore various aspects of teaching. You can browse through the table of contents below or use the search box above to search our site."

Very cool resource on inquiry-based learning from the CILASS project in Arts and Social Sciences at Sheffield.

"In any discipline or field, a key goal as well as challenge is supporting the learning of all students despite their many differences. Through programs, consultations, and resources, CRLT supports teachers in creating learning environments where students of all identities and backgrounds can flourish." This website provides an endless supply of fresh resources regarding inclusivity, with one page of invaluable articles or links, leading on to more and more. Spending a little or a lot of time on this site will vastly increase your understanding of inclusive teaching, provide you with tools and ideas to implement, and provide you with some of the research that substantiates all that has been included on the site.

This book (available in the U of S library) is an excellent exploration of the role of disciplines on teaching and learning in higher education (edited by Carolin Kreber, 2009)

This website, maintained by Mick Flanagan at University College London, is the most comprehensive online site gathering information, references, videos, and articles about threshold concepts. It includes overviews about threshold concepts, as well as an alphabetical listing of threshold concepts discussed in the literature across the disciplines.

An interesting resource for assessing outcomes in HE

The recent report from the Council of Ontraio Universities on Degree Level Expectations

"This site is designed to answer the question being asked: What does a high quality online course look like? It is ourhope that instructors and instructional designers will use this site to learn more about the Rubric for Online Instruction, and be able to view examples of exemplary courses that instructors have done in implementing the different components of the rubric."

The website from the team at Indiana University exploring bottlenecks in student learning as a way to decode the disciplines. Very relevant to

"As educators, we know when students tune in -- and we know when they tune out. The more elusive question is why. There is emerging consensus that the 20th-century approach to education, which favors methods such as lectures and rote learning, is standing in the way of making school relevant to more students."