Worth Reading

As the United Kingdom opens the door to the creation of a great many new, commercial universities and several states in the United States look to abolish tenure in universities, it is clear the policy landscape for higher education is changing.

This collection of papers seeks to offer a critical-analytic perspective on the future of the university and of degree-granting institutions. Driven by a commitment to academic freedom and to a vision of education rooted in the founding of the modern university (think Cardinal Newman), this collection challenges the dominant mode of thinking and debunks some of the claims made that have led to the uberization of the university. It makes you think.

Assessment is going through a revolution, thanks in part to the development of machine intelligent item generation, learning analytics and new forms of assessment using simulations and games.

This edited collection explores the state of play as at 2016 and offers insights, cautions and suggestions. All instructional designers need to better understand these new opportunities to re-think assessment. This collection of papers will help you do so.

The design, development, deployment, delivery and assessment of online learning is not a simple and straightforward practice in many institutions. There are nuances, complexities and challenges which get in the way of best practice and effective implementation of online learning strategies.

This book documents most of them and provides insights, especially for administrators, about what to anticipate and what steps to take to ensure the effective and efficient deployment of online learning. There is an especially helpful self-assessment and audit section which will help you look systematically at how ready the institution is for the next stage of your online learning plan.

This interesting collection of insights and practice focuses on how faculty members can create personalized learning using adaptive learning models and systems, authentic learning and learning activities linked to learning styles. Given this is one of the key trends – shifting from group and class-based learning to individual learning – this book provides effective and focused insights for faculty members seeking to innovate in their classrooms.

Using the frame of seeking to understand historical patterns and trends from 1993 to the present day, this book seeks to anticipate the next set of developments to 2030. While the focus is on American higher education and the university sector, there are important ideas and lessons here relevant to many around the world. There is an especially insightful chapter about whether or not the faculty essential to the university and the shifting role of the faculty over the next two decades is a theme of this book. This book does not blindly extoll the virtues of technology – it seeks to understand the next set of developments in terms of teaching in a digital age.

This collection of contributions from some leading thinkers and practitioners of instructional design covers a broad range of topics from “how do people learn?” to “what tools do we use to help design effective learning?”. There are insightful chapters on augmented reality and gaming, as well as some very new thinking on the practice of design which will help both newcomers and veterans of the work think differently about their next projects. Insightful, practical and contemporary.

As college and university classes (whether in person or online) become more culturally diverse, faculty and instructors need to be sensitive to, and able to, leverage the cultural diversity of their students in support of learning. One consequence of our deepening understanding of the needs of Indigenous learners, for example, is the need to honour and respect traditional knowledge and ways of knowing and learning.

But how do we do this? This is a “hot button” topic. The reality of cultural pluralism is not really debatable. In Canada, we have some of the most diverse classroom environments in the world. The core question is how to address cultural pluralism in the general education curriculum. This book provides some responses to the “how” question.

The nature of assessment and the credentials resulting from college and university learning are changing. From an employer’s perspective, the diploma or degree is becoming less important as the focus shifts to skills and capabilities. The emergence of new credential types – badges, credits for MOOCs, competency-based assessments, e-portfolio capability records – all point to a changing landscape for employers and educational providers. This is a comprehensive look at this landscape and its components. Well worth a read.

Even though Instructional Systems Design (ISD) has been somewhat out of favour for some time, it is the backbone of many other instructional design strategies and is still widely used in skills-based training. This is an excellent introduction to ISD and is full of practical suggestions, guidance and best practices. The writing is clear and the suggestions helpful. It is one of the books you need to read from time to time to refresh yourself on basic principles and the essence of design.

The term "constructivism" often strikes fear in faculty members who are used to "talk and chalk presentations" in large lecture theatres followed by small seminars with groups of students. Yet, engaged learning using projects, challenges, applied research, team problem solving and other activities are not difficult things to manage, even in large enrolment classes. They are difficult to create in an online environment, but this book challenges all of us engaged in ODFL to do so. It outlines the theory and the evidence base for the work and suggests design approaches. There are also case studies. This book will help readers think through their design and pedagogical assumptions and challenge them to think differently.

Many new faculty are faced with the challenge of creating and teaching online for the first time. Many established faculty may be looking to develop new online courses, but have not created the course they are to teach. This book is a gift for all. Though written some time ago – it makes no reference to a variety of artificial intelligence or adaptive technologies now widely in use – it is a basic, focused, well-written, step-by-step practical guide. Once you have this book on your desk and start reading, it is difficult to put down because it gets you thinking.

Many colleges and universities offer scholarships to attract the “best” students, yet it is often the case these students work to secure high grades in early stages of degrees and then transfer to institutions with better reputations and connections to industry. This is what the analytics show. Other analytics show we can predict, using models of past student behaviour, which students are most likely to be struggling with a specific course and are likely to not complete. This is why analytics is growing quickly, not just in terms of securing students and marketing the institution, but also in terms of improving learning outcomes, especially student retention and completion. It sounds complicated, but this book is well written, focused and clear – it provides all you need to know if you are considering an investment in analytics. 

Using designs proven to work presented as case studies, the contributors to this collection seek to offer an understanding of the nature of instructional design and the challenges associated with designing effective and efficient learning and of integrating technology into that learning. Not an easy task. Yet the contributors do solid work in sharing their design processes, their working assumptions and the challenges these gave rise to. The book explores a variety of topics – activity-based learning, collaboration, math education, turning a “collection” into an experience – and effectively engages the reader in reflective practice. Reading this collection of reflective stories will help faculty produce better designs for learning.

The core principle of the book is that individuals are not creative, ideas are creative, and that there are multiple ways for a variety of individuals to participate in the development of creative ideas.

This dynamic re-framing of invention and innovation provides strategies for faculty and instructors, curriculum designers, policymakers, researchers, and others who seek to develop a more equitable approach towards establishing creative learning experiences in various educational settings. This is a powerful, constructivist approach to the development of creative skills in classrooms and for online learning.

All pilots in the US Air Force in the 1940s and early 1950s had trouble controlling their planes as the cockpits had been designed for an ‘average’ that did not exist. Not one pilot matched the dimensions of the cockpit, which had been designed by averaging the measurements of 4,600 pilots.

The bell curve (also known as the "normal curve") is not normal. Yet most of our educational institutions are designed around the notion of the average learner, despite the fact we now have access to technologies and business processes which enable us to personalize learning and differentiate teaching and service by need. This well written, straightforward and quick-to-read book must be on every policy maker and planner's reading list. It will change how we think about assessment, teaching and students.

Good teaching, many believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier.

Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for learners to becoming more productive. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads to both more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned.

Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. More complex and durable learning comes from self-testing, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interweaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick appeals to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

At a time when many are preoccupied with big data, this refreshing focus on small data - the focused observations made which can change the way we think about something - is both refreshing and inspiring. Given teaching and learning is about relationships - the relationship between students and their instructor, students and their peers and students and the body of knowledge which provides the basis of work - subtle changes in these relationships can signal major changes to teaching, learning, technology and assessment.

Though this book is not explicitly about learning and higher education, implicitly it is. It is full of stories, practical examples and illustrations of how an observation can lead to the transformation of something as commonplace as Pepsi or Lego. This book will get you thinking.

A focus on skills, especially for college-based programs, will be of growing importance. As we move towards more modular, stackable designs and competency- and capability-based assessment, the development of skills and the building of capacities will become the "new black" for instructional designers. Everyone will want to know how to create learning experiences which promote and develop mastery and how skills can be assessed.

This practical, well written book will help in this work. While strongly focused on training, the book can quickly be translated into college setting.

Social media are significant resources for teaching and learning. This monograph explores the opportunity of leveraging these media for citizenship, social justice and personal responsibility. It is a collection of insightful, focused and challenging papers which encourages critical reflection and an exploration of opportunities related to the use of e-learning and social media. This is an academic publication (not a how to), but nonetheless it is full of examples of what peers are doing around the world, pre-school to doctoral studies. There are especially interesting pieces on building "presence" and a lot of insightful papers on learning and social justice. It is helpful for those who want to seriously reflect on what they really want to do to leverage social media for effective learning.

Drawing on case studies from across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe, the contributors offer diverse perspectives explaining the impact of transnational politics on higher education--and higher education on transitional politics--across time and locality.

This book is among the first multi-disciplinary effort to wrestle with the question of how we can understand the political role of higher education, and the political force universities exert in the realm of international relations. While this may sound like an abstract collection of chapters, it is in fact highly relevant to Canadian public policy discussions of skills, relevance, internationalization, competition and financing of higher education. The trade agreements being signed today all contain commitments to learner mobility and to the faster and easier recognition of foreign credentials. This is a relevant book for these developments.

This collection of papers explores the implications of MOOC developments for teaching and learning in higher education. It is not advocating MOOCs; simply asking, "What are the implications for us as teachers of these developments?" As such, it is insightful and provocative and well worth the read. In particular, Diana Laurillard's opening paper provides some helpful suggestions about the integration of technology in blended learning classrooms and Paul Ruhl's paper towards the end of the book suggests a different approach to tutored online courses. A strong and insightful collection which may inspire innovation.

Though focused on K-12 and the United States, Sam Abrams' insightful book looks at the spread of the idea that private sector thinking should inform public education policy. This kind of thinking has led to a global education reform movement (GERM), which has infected all areas of public policy, including higher education, in many parts of the world. While Canada's post-secondary sector has only a small number of private players, policy making is informed by notions of markets, competition, entrepreneurial delivery and other commercial constructs. This book is worth the read. Carefully researched and full of insights, Sam Abrams has done a masterful job of deconstructing this thinking and showing its weaknesses. He also suggests all public policy makers need to learn from these developments so as to better enable public education.

Clive Shepherd, who works extensively in skills training, has developed a design approach based on Preparation, Input, Application and Follow-up (PIAF) and this book provides examples of how this works. The key is student engagement - creating designs, which hook the learner and keep them involved at every stage of their learning journey. There is strong emphasis on learner supports and varied resources over the length of a course. Formal learning is not excluded, but seen as one of many components in a designed and deliberate approach to learning.

Canada's trades training system is in the process of re-building. In part, this is in response to the "skills gap" and in part, it's about embracing new approaches to flexible, competency-based learning. Only about four in ten apprentices complete their program and receive their certificate of qualification.
 
Certified journeypersons are critical to the Canadian economy; they are the highest, broadest skillset holders in the trades. The apprenticeship system has produced many highly skilled and competent journeypersons who are the backbone of their respective industries. Nevertheless, there are hundreds of thousands of people working in the trades without any kind of formal government issued credential. For Canada to become more productive and competitive, there is a need to look at new approaches to skills development. This quick read, at no cost, outlines an approach to the reinvention of trades education.