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Mid-Career Faculty Issues Often Overlooked

Faculty careers are often divided into three phases: beginning, middle, and end. New faculty have been studied in some detail—probably because of the great influx of them. So have senior faculty, although less than new faculty. But what about that expanse in the middle? Researchers Baldwin, Lunceford, and Vanderlinden (reference below) quote sources describing mid-career faculty as “perhaps the least studied and most ill-defined period in life.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD November 20, 2008

Why Your New Department Chair Needs a Coach

Becoming a department chair does not always follow a smooth or particularly well-thought-out process. Most faculty, who have no academic leadership training, need real support to make this career transition a successful one. […]

Russ Olwell PhD November 19, 2008

Technology Trends in Higher Education: How Web 2.0 Tools are Transforming Learning

It wasn’t all that long ago that the only people using Web 2.0 applications were Millennials and other early adopters. Today Web 2.0 tools are

Mary Bart November 17, 2008

Answers for Those Afraid to Take a Hit on College Student Ratings

At a workshop on learner-centered teaching, a participant told us that philosophically she couldn’t agree more with the need to make students more responsible for their own learning, but she couldn’t go there because her ratings would take a hit. I assumed this meant she was a new faculty member and under scrutiny for tenure. […]

Maryellen Weimer, PhD November 13, 2008

Four Tips to Help Distance Educators Manage Time Spent Online

Has email overtaken your life? Teresa Marie Kelly offers hope. As a distance education faculty member at Kaplan University, Kelly knows first hand how easy it is to fall into the email trap and offers the following four tips for to help online faculty create a better work-life balance. […]

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti November 12, 2008

Classroom Management Tips for New College Instructors

The sheer volume of content faculty members are responsible for teaching is enormous, but being an effective educator takes much more than the mastery and delivery of material. It requires unique skills and knowledge that most new higher education instructors were never trained in. For newcomers, the challenges can seem overwhelming. […]

Mary Bart November 10, 2008

Five Things College Professors Can Learn from K-12 Educators

Unlike their college-level counterparts, those who teach at the K-12 level spend a significant portion of their education studying the “how” of teaching. What they learn can be invaluable to college professors who enter classrooms with vast content knowledge but little (or no) background in teaching and learning. As those who teach these teachers, we’d like to showcase five teaching strategies college professors can learn from those who teach younger students. […]

Sara E. Quay November 5, 2008

Distance Education – Measuring the Benefits and Costs

In the early years, web-based distance education was looked at as a magic bullet. A relatively quick and easy way to increase revenue without a lot of additional work or expense. Like so many things in life, however, turning a profit in online distance education is easier said than done. […]

Mary Bart November 3, 2008

Nine Tips for Creating a Hybrid Course

Most instructors supplement their face-to-face courses with some online learning materials such as online syllabi, handouts, PowerPoint slides, and course-related Web links. All of these can add to the learning experience, but they are merely a start to making full use of the learning potential of the online learning environment in either a hybrid or totally online course. Although there is no standard definition of a hybrid course, one characteristic that makes a course a hybrid is the use of the Web for interaction rather than merely as a means of posting materials, says LaTonya Motley, instructional technology specialist at El Camino Community College in California.

Rob Kelly October 29, 2008

Creating Faculty Collegiality: Strategies for Department Chairs

Incivility in higher education has flourished in recent years, fueled by a convergence of factors ranging from the infiltration of a more corporate culture and a system that rewards individual accomplishments above collaboration to decreased state funding coupled with increased workloads and expectations. For department chairs, leading teams of educators during such a difficult time can be wrought with unexpected challenges and frustrations.

Mary Bart October 27, 2008

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