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Small class size is often used as an indicator of quality in higher education, and some research suggests that instructors in smaller classes more often use activities that are learner-centered and that involve physical and mental activity on the part of learners, such as group work, simulations, and case studies. However, we have little information on how instructors change their pedagogical practice when they teach in large- versus small-class settings. In this study, we examine alignment between intended and enacted teaching strategies, or initial plans and specific ways in which instructors reported altering their teaching in the context of a university policy shift to smaller classes. Furthermore, we examine instructional challenges in this shift to call attention to professional development needs of small-class teaching and to best leverage the benefits of such activities for student performance and retention.

Although the number of international experience requirements (IER) for college students is growing, there is limited research on their impact. The authors present a four-year study of the impact on an IER at the University of Michigan's Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design, comparing outcomes for required and non-required cohorts. Evaluation of this program entailed mixed methodology, including surveys, focus groups, and analysis of student reflections. Results suggest that the IER allowed the School to develop an infrastructure that prompted a greater diversity of students to study abroad, encouraged students to choose more culturally dissimilar destinations, and produced a measurable impact on students'reflection and global perspective taking.

In this chapter, we describe strategies teaching and learning centers can use in partnering with programs to conduct action-oriented assessment projects. We illustrate these strategies with examples from an evaluation of a social engagement requirement for art and design students.

We offer a framework for guiding an effective Center for Teaching and Learning: Responsiveness, Relationships, Resources, and Research. Our intention is to fill a gap in the literature on guidance for CTL leadership. These four principles are grounded in both scholarly and experiential evidence, drawing from multiple CTL directors with a range of experience levels at different center and institutional types.

Nearly 25 years after Barr and Tagg's (1995) article on the move away from the Instruction Paradigm, the authors argue that we are experiencing another shift, from a learning-centered to de-centered educational environment. Just as Barr and Tagg signalled a paradigm shift from teaching to learning, the authors suggest--nearly a quarter century later--that another transition, from a learning-centered to de-centered educational environment is being experienced. The de-centered paradigm includes an expanded vision of ways to develop, design, and deliver learning to allow for a more democratic or reciprocal relationship between instructor, learner, and material. A table is provided that illustrates a comparison of the three paradigms. Best ways to support instructors as they navigate the new terrain of this de-centered paradigm include Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) or units supporting faculty professional development. In many cases, CTLs are increasingly hearing calls to address the de-centered educational landscape by offering equally distributed support, using emerging technology (e.g., analytics or personalized advising) or disciplinary-based expertise (such as discipline-based educational research, also known as DBER). The key benefit of a CTL is its ability to re-center--or connect--resources as campuses navigate a de-centered educational landscape. Some have described this emerging role as a "hub" function or "concierge": One approach would be to see teaching and learning centers as the hub of a wheel that includes a range of other offices as related spokes. In this approach, the faculty development center may take on the role of concierge, helping faculty members determine their needs and interests and then connecting them with the appropriate resources on campus. Centers for Teaching and Learning play an important "hub" role in this landscape to connect the diverse constituencies and resources within institutions of higher education, and to support broader institutional goals such as inclusive excellence and student success.

While dropping classes is an almost ubiquitous practice on campuses, it is far less studied than course selection or overall retention. This lack of research is striking given that the practice has implications for the evaluation of teaching, efficient use of institutional resources, time to degree, and educational inclusion. The authors present an action research project that focuses on the reasons undergraduates offer for their course drop decisions, the timing of the drops, and the characteristics of the students and courses involved in drops. The project was a collaboration among students, faculty, and administration at Brown University, and the results have been used to inform advising practices, university discussions on its course drop policy, and departmental efforts at diversity and inclusion. Although the results are partly context-specific--the study was conducted at a highly selective, private research university with a high retention rate. The authors provide a sampling of their findings to illustrate the types of questions that might be answered by other colleges and universities that face similar problems. Research on course drops offers a window into the strategies and struggles of undergraduates, who might drop due to lack of preparation, as a way to maximize GPA, or to respond to time pressures from paid and unpaid extracurricular activities.

This paper presents a quasi-experimental evaluation of a required, teaching-focused, new faculty program at a large research university. The study makes use of institutional data, including student evaluations of teaching and faculty participation in educational development activities, which are available on many campuses yet rarely used in program evaluation. Results show positive impacts. Faculty found the program valuable and reported increases in their preparation for a range of teaching tasks. In comparison to earlier cohorts, program participants received stronger student evaluations on two global items, and demonstrated significantly more connections with the teaching center in their early careers.

A theory of change is a prediction about desired outcomes and the actions that may prompt them. Research on educational change suggests that explicit theories of change are essential for effectively engaging in academic change work. While many centers for teaching and learning (CTL) express aims around organizational change, a recent study was not able to identify any theories of change made public in annual reports or websites. Therefore, we outline an adaptable process for other CTLs to discuss and make explicit their own theories of change. This process involves four steps, moving across scale of a CTL (large group, small group, and individual). We offer recommendations for other types of CTLs, such as "centers of one," to develop a theory of change and theorize about current and potential utility of a theory of change for a CTL's work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As assessment, already well established in higher education, gains attention in the field of educational development (ED), we ask: What does it mean to practice assessment from an ED perspective? In response, we examine four principles that are central to this endeavor: (a) bridging work across communities and multiple institutional levels; (b) collective, collaborative ownership; (c) action-oriented focus on student-centered learning; and (d) intentionality about inclusiveness to recognize diverse experiences of participants and stakeholders. We apply these principles to four examples of assessment practice at different institutions and offer a rationale for why this lens has utility for the improvement of teaching and learning in higher education.

Research on the benefits of visual learning has relied primarily on lecture-based pedagogy, but the potential benefits of combining active learning strategies with visual and verbal materials on learning anatomy has not yet been explored. In this study, the differential effects of text-based and image-based active learning exercises on examination performance were investigated in a functional anatomy course. Each class session was punctuated with an average of 12 text-based and image-based active learning exercises. Participation data from 231 students were compared with their examination performance on 262 questions associated with the in-class exercises. Students also rated the helpfulness and difficulty of the in-class exercises on a survey. Participation in the active learning exercises was positively correlated with examination performance (r = 0.63, P < 0.001). When controlling for other key demographics (gender, underrepresented minority status) and prior grade point average, participation in the image-based exercises was significantly correlated with performance on examination questions associated with image-based exercises (P < 0.001) and text-based exercises (P < 0.01), while participation in text-based exercises was not. Additionally, students reported that the active learning exercises were helpful for seeing images of key ideas (94%) and clarifying key course concepts (80%), and that the image-based exercises were significantly less demanding, less hard and required less effort than text-based exercises (P < 0.05). The findings confirm the positive effect of using images and active learning strategies on student learning, and suggest that integrating them may be especially beneficial for learning anatomy.

Effective consulting is a key skill for educational developers. Although most educational developers are new to the field, there is limited research about how new practitioners develop consulting skills. The key research question this study explores is: How do new graduate teaching consultants develop as practitioners? This study empirically applies several "classic" models of consulting to better understand new consultants' perceived development of expertise, preferred consulting approaches, and reflection about them. The findings are generally confirmatory of the ways that classic frameworks map onto the development of consultants. They also suggest greater attention to supporting new consultants beyond "getting started," as well as to preparing new consultants for the differences between intra- and interdisciplinary consultations.

The academic and athletic missions of colleges and universities are often portrayed in opposition. One illustration of this tension is the recent "Varsity Blues" admissions scandal, in which illicit athletic recruiting subverted equitable admissions processes. Other less newsworthy examples of tensions around collegiate athletics include student-athletes' need to miss classes or exams for games, as well as some faculty perceptions about athletic "cliques" in majors or courses (when members of the same team, for instance, sit together in a class). Are the athletic and academic missions of colleges and universities really so antithetical? This article explores that question by describing a faculty-athletic coach learning community at Brown University that recognizes the complementary role that many athletic coaches and faculty members play. Through their work with the learning community, the authors have uncovered more similarities than differences in teaching and coaching contexts. Although athletics is often thought of as an extracurricular activity, the observations and discussions among the members of this community often suggest that, like faculty members, coaches are often engaged in teaching key liberal arts competencies such as problem solving, writing, persuasive communication, and critical thinking.

Learning Analytics (LA) has been identified as one of the top technology trends in higher education today (Johnson et al., 2013). LA is based on the idea that datasets generated through normal administrative, teaching, or learning activities--such as registrar data or interactions with learning management systems--can be analyzed to enhance student learning, academic progress, and teaching practice. Examples of LA projects in colleges and universities include Purdue University's "Course Signals" system, an early-alert notification for struggling students, and Austin Peay State University's "Degree Compass," a course recommender program based on predictive analytics. This article describes one large-scale LA initiative at the University of Michigan (U-M) to improve performance for thousands of students in gateway physics courses. The goal is not only to describe the development and implementation of this unique initiative in STEM education but also to discuss how the approach can help meet some of the challenges to more widespread LA adoption.

As more faculty members utilize student-centered methods, we should also expect to see an increase in graduate teaching assistants (TAs) who are asked to co-teach these classes. However, little is written about the challenges TAs face and the adjustments they make when teaching student-centered courses. This study examined a student-centered course taught by the "hevruta" method, a dyadic approach that emphasizes text-based student discussions. Although students reported significant learning gains, both they and TAs had to negotiate new instructional roles. Based on student and TA feedback, strategies are presented to facilitate effective student learning in a student-centered course co-taught by TAs.

Defined as the systematic study of teaching and learning made public, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has drawn increasing attention from faculty members and institutions in recent years, perhaps as a response to rising demands for accountability and evidence-based teaching practices. However, the process of setting up a SoTL project, carrying it out, and converting the resultant data into meaningful findings can keep even the most accomplished faculty from embarking on the tas--or, if they do, succeeding at it. Many have described the reward-based challenges of facilitating SoTL in a research university. However, other challenges are less frequently identified. The Investigating Student Learning (ISL) program began at the University of Michigan in 2008 to fund faculty and faculty/postdoc/graduate-student teams to pursue SoTL research on courses and curricula. In designing a comprehensive program to support this activity, the authors drew on the experiences of other campuses' SoTL initiatives. The ISL program has developed a number of structures to facilitate the process for SoTL researchers, adapting practices that have been effective at other institutions and consolidating them into one grant program. The authors discuss these features, other university models for them, and the reasons they were developed. (Contains 2 tables and 11 resources.)

Much has been written about the benefits of collaborative learning in terms of its impact on interpersonal skills and academic achievement. Many education studies suggest that students learn better when they work interactively with others and that retention of material is improved through collaborative learning. Others explain that the development of Boyer's higher-order cognitive tasks such as analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and problem solving are enhanced when students work with peers on assignments. Most colleges and universities seek to produce graduates who can be competent team members in an increasingly complex world. What is it about collaborative learning that can be so powerful, and how does it help move students toward those lofty goals named in so many college and university mission statements? For answers, the authors looked at one method of collaborative learning called "hevruta" as it was used in a large lecture course at the University of Michigan. "Hevruta" is a method of learning rooted in the Judaic tradition in which students engage in sustained dialogue with a partner. Through their work at the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan, the authors conducted surveys and focus groups with students who learned through the "hevruta" method over a 15-week semester, and in this process they learned about students' reflections about how this pedagogical approach affected their learning. Educators can benefit from clues and insights into the sometimes mysterious process of students' journeys toward becoming independent, contextual, and compassionate thinkers. To serve as their partners on this journey, educators need to know teaching strategies that challenge and support them. They also need to know how to spot when students are moving in the right direction. In this article, the authors try to move closer to understanding connections between collaborative learning through "hevruta" and the epistemological development of college students.

The Two Survey Method (TSM) is a new time-efficient tool for gathering formative student feedback. Based on the Delphi technique, the TSM uses iterative surveys to develop student consensus about key strengths and suggestions for instruction. Evaluation data indicate that both faculty and students are satisfied with the method's efficiency and the data captured. Potential uses for the TSM include assessing courses that have little time for collecting student feedback or supplementing existing feedback to check reliability or develop actionable strategies. (Contains 1 table and 2 footnotes.)