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This site provides practical strategies to address teaching problems across the disciplines. These strategies are firmly grounded in educational research and learning principles. How does it work? Begin with Step 1 Step 1: Identify a PROBLEM you encounter in your teaching. Step 2: Identify possible REASONS for the problem Step 3: Explore STRATEGIES to address the problem.

Open-source textbooks, long considered a promising way to cut costs but still not widely used, could become more readily available and easily vetted as a University of Minnesota project expands. Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. (Faculty members elsewhere are welcome to post their own reviews, but they won't be compensated.) Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500, with all of the money coming from donor funds.

The lecture hall is under attack. Science, math and engineering departments at many universities are abandoning or retooling the lecture as a style of teaching, worried that it's driving students away. The faculty at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore has dedicated this academic year to finding alternatives to the lecture in those subjects. Johns Hopkins, Harvard University and even the White House have hosted events in which scholars have assailed the lecture.

So educators, here are some things to think about and consider if you are thinking about or already using the flipped classroom model.

A good picture of the changing landscape of "accommodations."

More food for thought on discussion and community.

A collection of video tutorials from the Indiana University School of Education.

As universities transition to a mobile-friendly campus, more and more IT departments are considering the benefits of open source technology. Cost is definitely a factor, but schools are just as attracted to the flexibility that open source gives them.

With its recently debuted project "Toda la UNAM en Línea" (All of UNAM Online), the university will go beyond providing lecture notes and classroom handouts by giving users digital access to libraries, special collections, conferences, and the research of students and professors.

"The market for "continuing education" is potentially much larger than undergraduate. After those four years of college, there are a lot more years in a rapidly-changing workplace. Maybe that's where the real money lies? Could providing the on-going, lifelong learning be the place where some of the costs for the face-to-face undergraduate education are carried? Maybe the content gets paid for by the lifelong learners, and the undergrads get it at reduced cost? Recall what John Daniel said about the US Open University - it failed because it went after undergraduate first, not graduate."

"This is the final report, in a series of four reports, produced by the CEO Forum on Education and Technology during a five-year exploration of the impact of educational technology. The CEO Forum's mission for the five-year initiative was to provide reports to inform educational decision makers about effective uses of educational technology. The report concludes that effective uses of technology to enhance student achievement are based on four building blocks which are alignment, assessment, accountability, and access and analysis. Its definition of student achievement includes 21st Century skills. The report describes 21st Century skills as "a new set of skills necessary to prepare students for life and work in the digital age. These skills include digital literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication and high productivity abilities" (p. 32). The CEO Forum asserts that to obtain the maximum return on investments in technology, educational organizations need to focus their technology efforts on the four building blocks of student achievement."