Elizabeth F. Barkley

If I could recommend only one book on course transformation for the Blended Learning in Higher Education group to consider, I would choose this one. Barkley organizes the volume into three parts encompassing the full range of requirements for a faculty who wish to either augment or fully reformat the way that students interact in their courses. It is a blended book, focusing on student outcomes in general and includes numerous very specific techniques that can be translated to in person and show more online experiences.

It's sophistication lies in the fact that it does not make the simplistic assumption that listening to a lecture is ALWAYS passive nor that participating in a group is ALWAYS active. It recognizes that a student's prior knowledge and cognitive attention can be aligned with the faculty learning designer's academic expectations in a thoughtfully-constructed activity. It assumes that unmeasurable components are essential to the success of the teaching and the learning, such as: passion, enthusiasm, and personality.

In Part 1 conceptual frameworks are covered broadly enough to remind any experienced instructor of one or two favorite or forgotten frameworks. In Part 2, 50 strategies are succinctly inventoried. Again they are broadly arrayed and clearly labeled so that an experienced educator can quickly locate a few new ideas. Specific tips are included with each strategy. And finally, in Part 3, Barkley catalogs a diverse array of well-tested techniques for the classroom. These give enough detail for the learning designer to use them immediately or to develop their own script for the new activity.

Best of all, she includes brief descriptions of how the activities can be transferred to an online format. show less

Student Engagement Techniques (or SETs) are means of actively engaging students in their learning. Often this is a generative approach to learning, where what students learn one day propels them into what they learn the next. This book could be thought of as a handbook of active learning techniques presented in 3 sections. Section One is the conceptual framework for student engagement. Section Two provides tips and strategies for fostering actively learning. Section Three provides specific show more strategies or active learning techniques and is divided into types of learning (e.g., problem solving, application, performance, attitudes, metacognition, critical thinking, etc.). This is an excellent resource for faculty who are exploring the use of active learning in their classes as well as those who have used SETs previously, but want to expand their toolbox. show less

Learning Assessment Techniques provides 50 easy-to-implement active learning techniques that gauge student learning across academic disciplines and learning environments. Using Fink's Taxonomy of Significant Learning as its organizational framework, it embeds assessment within active learning activities.

Keeping students involved, motivated, and activley learning is challenging educators across the country, yet good advice on how to accomplish this has not been readily available. Student Techniques is a comprehensive resource that offers college teachers a dynamic model for engaging students and includes over one hundred tips, strategies, and techniques that have been proven to help teachers from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions motivate and connect with their students.