Learning Matters: The Transformation of US Higher EducationHigher education in the United States of America, considered by many to set a worldwide standard for broad access and high levels of excellence, has for many decades seen massive changes in its approaches to teaching and learning. Redesigning and transforming the way colleges and universities teach their students has been likened to reconstructing an airplane while it remains aloft. More than 4,000 US colleges and universities have met the challenge by analyzing major changes in student populations and introducing new instructional techniques that recognize the primacy of learning over teaching. This seemingly innocent but powerful transformation, acknowledging that teaching only matters as a means to the real end – learning – is powering a pedagogical revolution. The Learning Revolution in US higher education began when World War II veterans flooded university classrooms, soon to be followed by their children, the American «Baby Boom.» Overwhelming numbers of new students from new kinds of backgrounds flooded colleges and universities, forcing professors to rethink how they went about teaching these new generations. To handle the numbers, many new universities were created, and many established centers for teaching excellence to help professors adapt to new populations with new techniques. In the 1990s, higher education further professionalized the teaching craft via the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Research into how students learn and how to help them learn took its place alongside traditional academic research. Aided by a wave of new technologies, teaching centers and the scholarship of teaching and learning are transforming the university classroom as well as many new venues outside the classroom where learning now takes place. The resulting new pedagogical architecture now embraces every dimension of US higher education. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 1 |
PART I | 13 |
Finance Politics and the Changing Fiscal Nature of Higher | 21 |
PART II | 41 |
The First Major Challenge for Modern Higher Education | 57 |
Other Major Challenges for Higher Education Pedagogy | 71 |
The Curriculum as Essential Framework for Pedagogy | 99 |
PART III | 111 |
Common terms and phrases
academic active learning Alverno College American assessment Association campus Carnegie Carnegie Foundation Center for Teaching civic engagement classroom collaborative colleges and universities community colleges community of practice complete context create creativity critical thinking curriculum degree Desire2Learn disciplines Electronic portfolios emphasize enrollments evaluation example experience faculty development faculty members focus for-profit for-profit colleges funding GI Bill global goal helping students high school higher education pedagogy improve increased innovative institutions instruction instructors integrate intercultural competence interdisciplinary internationalization knowledge learning communities major multiple numbers offered online courses organizations pedagogical architecture postsecondary education problem problem-based learning professors programs projects result Retrieved Scholarship of Teaching skills social SoTL specific STEM student learning student-centered learning substantial success teachers teaching and learning Theodore Hesburgh topics traditional typically U.S. higher education undergraduate University of Phoenix