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…

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.

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…

Describes the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning's publishing of "Opening Lines: Approaches to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" (Hutchings, 2000), a set of case studies illustrating what is entailed in the scholarship of teaching and learning in different fields and instructional contexts. (SG)

Asked seven faculty members who have participated in a teaching initiative at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning to write case studies about ethical issues they confronted in their work. Three themes surfaced repeatedly: (1) sharing student work; (2) choosing methods; and (3) the ethics of bad news. (SLD)

Reviews programs such as the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and literature on the scholarship of teaching at the higher education level. Suggests that the scholarship of teaching is not synonymous with excellent teaching, but requires faculty to "go meta," to systematically investigate questions of student learning.…

In 1998, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching launched an initiative known as the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). This bibliography was complied early in the project to establish a baseline against which progress in the higher education arena might be gauged at the end of its current 5-year…

One of the great challenges in higher education is to help students integrate their learning. The capacity to make connections is essential to the conduct of personal, professional, and civic life, and is at the very heart of liberal education. It is also, arguably, more important than ever, and more difficult to achieve, as students transfer…