The authors share principles developed from a Sloan Foundation-sponsored conference where participants considered professional development broadly, from learning from the scholarship of their colleagues to seeking support to attain personal equilibrium.

The authors point out that offices of institutional research are valuable resources for collecting data to help faculty improve their teaching, and can involve the whole institution in a collaborative effort towards improved student learning. Defining institutional research as a capacity to work closely with faculty to explore questions about what…

It is hard to find a campus today that does not collect student evaluations of teaching. Not everyone, it is true, puts full stock in the results, but it is hard to argue with the idea that students have important perspectives to contribute. The writer advocates that listening to students is a good idea that does not go far enough. Describing…

This essay posits the emergence of a "teaching commons"--a conceptual space in which communities of educators committed to inquiry and innovation come together to exchange ideas about teaching and learning and use them to meet the challenges of educating students. The October gathering of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching…

A Carnegie Foundation researcher has been exploring the different forums for work on teaching and learning in higher education, and has uncovered an array of such occasions, bringing faculty together by department or discipline, across the campus, and in national networks and scholarly communities. Energetic conversations and communities have…