This book explores the challenges of an academic teaching career. The authors discuss the issues that may arise in the tenure process, scholarship activities, publishing, and providing service to their academic communities as well as how to keep teaching lessons relevant and fresh.

Giving higher education professionals the language and tools they need to seize new opportunities in digital learning. A quiet revolution is sweeping across US colleges and universities. As schools rethink how students learn - both inside and outside the classroom - technology is changing not only what should be taught but how best to teach it. From active learning and inclusive pedagogy to online and hybrid courses, traditional institutions are leveraging their fundamental strengths while challenging long-standing assumptions about how teaching and learning happen. At this intersection of learning, technology, design, and organizational change lies the foundation of a new academic discipline of digital learning. Coalescing around this new field of study is a common critical language, along with a set of theoretical frameworks, methodological practices, and shared challenges and goals. In Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney explore the context of this new discipline, show how it exists within a larger body of scholarship, and give examples of how this scholarship is being used on campuses. What Kim and Maloney demonstrate in this foundational text is an understanding that change is a complex dynamic between what happens in the classroom and the larger institutional structures and traditions at play. Ultimately, the authors make a compelling case not only for this turn to learning but also for creating new pathways for nonfaculty learning careers, understanding the limits of professional organizations and social media, and the need to establish this new interdisciplinary field of learning innovation.

"How does social media affect working life in Higher Education? How are universities harnessing its power to aid student learning? This innovative collection brings together academics and those working in professional services to examine these questions and more. The diverse and expert contributors analyse the many ways social media can be used to enhance teaching and learning, research, professional practice, leadership, networking and career development. The impact of social media is evaluated critically, with an eye both to the benefits and the problems of using these new forms of digital communication. This is the first volume to give such detailed attention to this area of high interest. Its innovative approach extends to its creation, with contributors found via their presence on Twitter. The short and impactful chapters are accessible while retaining an academic focus through their application of relevant learning theories and educational context. Social Media and Higher Education is essential reading for any professional working in higher education, including lecturers teaching education courses. It is also significant for researchers looking at more recent developments in the field and what it means to work in a modern higher education environment."--Publisher's website.

In university teachers'' hectic lives, finding space to reflect, restore, renew, and recommit can seem impossible. Jean Koh Peters and Mark Weisberg believe regular reflection is critical and have designed A Teacher''s Reflection Book to help teachers and other professionals find that space. Growing out of the authors'' extensive experience facilitating retreats and leading teaching and learning workshops, the book builds on their discoveries in those settings, supporting and promoting teachers'' self-directed development. Inviting that development, A Teacher''s Reflection Book is a cornucopia of stories, exercises, and examples that will inspire teachers to make reflection a cornerstone of their daily lives. With its multiple suggestions and strategies, it offers something for every reader, and is responsive to teachers'' needs at all stages of their careers. The book''s six chapters offer readers several perspectives from which to reflect. Some sections offer glimpses of teachers in the midst of their daily teaching lives, while others step away, inviting readers to reflect on what it means to have a vocation as a teacher. The book explores how we listen, a crucial yet rarely taught skill, essential for reflecting, as well as for learning and teaching. And it invites teachers to reflect on their students: who they are, and what and how they learn. For those latter reflections, the authors turn the focus on fear, which so pervades university life and which can distort learners'' and teachers'' perspectives and responses. Throughout this book, readers will visit several classrooms and listen to the evocative voices of several thoughtful students. Revelatory, practical, and wise, A Teacher''s Reflection Book is a valuable companion and guide. "One key strength of the book is its authentic writing style, which engages the reader and builds the trustworthiness of the authors. Another strength is the book''s wealth of readings and the activities it offers to catalyze teacher reflection." -- Teaching Theology and Religion, Ryan S. Gardner "This excellent book should be part of every teacher''s professional library. It is a book pitched at all teachers in higher education and, through the processes of reflection, a book that advances important principles of good teaching practice that are usually introduced all too briefly in the basic texts on teaching in higher education. ...Several descriptive words come to mind when reading this book. It is a polite and gentle book. Politeness is revealed in the book''s sub-title - ''Exercises, stories, invitations''. It is the idea of invitation that characterizes much of the book. It is not didactic but rather invites us to use the book and the processes described in it in ways that work best for us. It does this through questions and inductive approaches to reflection. Through these approaches and the careful use of real-life examples, we are gently invited to explore the perspectives presented in the text and apply these to our personal and professional lives. It is also an accessible book. Most refreshingly, it is not burdened with unnecessary technical jargon and convoluted language that sadly cripples too much writing in education today and makes learning inaccessible to many, particularly for those readers whose first language is not English." -- Higher Education Research & Development (HERDSA), Robert Cannon "I was asked to write a book review but I find that, instead, I want to write a thank you note thanking Jean Koh Peters and Mark Weisberg for the gift of their book, A Teacher''s Reflection Book. ...The reflections, examples and exercises you offer in the book make reflecting about both challenging and positive moments in my life as a teacher feel like something I can do easily and regularly. ...In this book, you have found a way to model, encourage and help create a compassionate space where teachers can make the deepest connection between who they are and what they do. You give us permission to find our truth in and the courage to bring our hearts to our teaching and writing. You have made a home for reflection." -- The Law Teacher, Kimberly Kirkland, University of New Hampshire School of Law "We are all so busy. We race from task to task. We attempt to multi-task; dividing and depleting our energies. How many times do we arrive in class breathless with hardly a moment to think about what we have planned for the day? I harbor no illusions that a blog entry is going to change our lives, but I would like to use this one to reiterate the need to make time for reflection, for contemplation about what we do, and how and why we do it. The value of doing so is laid out clearly in [this] new book..." -- Teaching Professor Blog, Maryellen Weimer

American Catholic universities and colleges are wrestling today with how to develop in ways that faithfully serve their mission in Catholic higher education without either secularizing or becoming sectarian. Major challenges are faced when trying to simultaneously build and sustain excellence in undergraduate teaching, strengthen faculty research and publishing, and deepen the authentically Catholic character of education. This book uses the particular case of the University of Notre Dame to raise larger issues, to make substantive proposals, and thus to contribute to a national conversation affecting all Catholic universities and colleges in the United States (and perhaps beyond) today. Its arguments focus particularly on challenging questions around the recruitment, hiring, and formation of faculty in Catholic universities and colleges.

Published Under the Garamond Imprint The voices in this book reflect the broad diversity of a large urban university community, with contributions from undergraduate and graduate students, teaching assistants, contract and full-time faculty, staff and administrators. Issues of equity, diversity and power form the foundation of this community's thinking about pedagogy, and the topics span a continuum from the theoretical to the practical. Voices from the Classroom will have a broad appeal to the university teaching community across North America, facing common challenges in the twenty-first century.