Recently, a blog in the Chronicle of Higher Education raised the question of who are the most influential “gurus” or thinkers in higher education, mirroring a similar article in the Wall Street Journal.

Now, these lists are great for a community because they are always contentious. Consider for example a top ten list of the best sports teams. Given that we all agree that the Dallas Cowboys are number one, we would have a great conversation arguing over the teams that make up positions two through nine.

As most of you know, my professional background is in low-temperature geochemistry. My own transition from a novice to greater expertise concerning science education has been an interesting and long journey that has punctuated with brief periods of rapid enlightenment. Many of these flashes were catalyzed by finding a particularly interesting reading.

Early on, I recognized that focusing on teaching and learning at a major research university would need to pay attention to the sociocultural characteristics of my university. These characteristics include the values and beliefs of my academic department and disciplinary community, tenure & promotion criteria, and available resources. As many of you are probably aware, these characteristics can strongly guide science faculty from intergrating the scholarship of teaching and learning in any meaningful way.

My own personal journey led me to focus on developing integration and synergy between my scientific scholarship and my education scholarship. I see this as the best strategy to personally thrive as well as contributing significantly to these fields.

I usually suggest a few authors to new graduate students in my own research group including John Bransford and John Seeley-Brown.

John Bransford served as Co-Chair of several National Academy of Science committees. These committees wrote How Students Learn: History, Mathematics, and Science in the Classroom (2005), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School (1999, 2000), and How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice (1999).

John Seeley Brown writes extensively on the ways technology may serve to transform education. Some papers of his that I particularly liked were:

• Brown, J.S., 2006. New learning environments for the 21st century: Exploring the edge. Change, 38(5): 18-24.
• Brown, J.S. and Adler, R.P., 2008. Minds on fire. Open education, the long tail, and learning 2.0. Educause Review 43(1): 17-32.
• Brown, J.S., Collins, A. and Dugvid, P., 1989. Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1): 32-42.

Finally, with the risk of appearing to pander, I recently have been reading Ann Austin and Jim Fairweather’s work on faculty work life to support my efforts at institutional change including Ann’s book and Jim’s paper on faculty work life.

Rethinking Faculty Work: Higher Education’s Strategic Imperative by Judith M. Gappa, Ann E. Austin, and Andrea G. Trice. Jossey-Bass.

Fairweather, J.S., 2002. The mythologies of faculty productivity: Implications for institutional policy and decision making. Research in Higher Education, 73(1): 26-48.

Came across an interesting blog this morning in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the rising number of college students in remedial courses. The author, Mark Bauerlein, cites a number of news stories (such as this one on ACT scores) and reports that about a third of all college students enroll in “college readiness” courses to help them survive college.

Mark’s solution is that colleges and universities need to pay more attention to the intro courses that support basic skill development by getting more full professors in front of those courses. But I think Mark may not have researched this issue as well as he might……

A friend of mine once said that if you had design the least effective course for introductory courses, they would look pretty much like they do now – large lecture halls with little interactivity. Some of the comments in Mark’s blog correctly point out that this state of affairs has arisen primarily through economics ( which is why doing nothing but putting more full professors in front of large lecture halls won’t work on average).

High quality research on redesigning these courses, such as done by the National Center for Academic Transformation at RPI shows that introductory courses can be designed in ways that are both effective in promoting student learning and cost-effective.

What was much more interesting about Mark’s blog were the comments. Many of the comments discussed issues in K12 that can lead to student lacking college readiness. In particular, I found the comments that discuss university-School partnerships to be most aligned with my own experiences working with PLC-MAP, our University-school partnership focused on supporting novice science teachers. We need to all engaged because the issues affect us all.

On February 21st, Mark Bauerlein published a blog, entitled Digital Learning and Not Learning on the Chronicle of Higher Education web site on the impact of technology on learning.

In the post, Mark describes

Youtube video – you have to be kidding

Barbara Gross Davis, author of “Tools for Teaching” and a top undergraduate-education official at the University of California at Berkeley, will answer questions about teaching techniques and classroom skills, and about the art and science of teaching in a live Web chat on Thursday, February 21, at noon, U.S. Eastern time.

http://chronicle.com/live/2008/02/davis/?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Interesting commentary today in Mark Bauerlein’s blog in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the information literacy of our students.

The ETS website on testing student defines skills in information literacy as today’s students are part of a technology-savvy generation, but they are often still at a loss when it comes to using their critical thinking and problem-solving skills in a digital environment; a skill set identified as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Literacy.

ETS conducted a study in 2006 assessing ICT literacy in 6300 students in high school and college. Though it was a nonrandom sample, it was interesting that many students had difficulties in searching, assessing and synthesizing information from ill-constrained sources. (Get the report).

In any case where information technology is used to support inquiry activities in a classroom, ICT literacy is an important requirement for successful completion of  the inquiry-based instructional modules. I don’t often explicitly instruct my students in these skills but we have addressed the development of these skills in novice teachers enrolled in PLC-MAP.

Most universities and colleges seek to place diversity at the center of the academy’s educational and societal mission. This is challenging task, so much so that it is one of the central pillars of the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL), an NSF-supported collaboration of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty at six universities.

Scott E. Page, a professor of complex systems, political science and economics at the University of Michigan recently published a book, “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools and Societies” (Princeton University Press), that uses mathematical modeling and case studies to show how variety in staffing produces organizational strength.

As outlined in the New York Times review of the book, the author makes an interesting case that diversity improves the function of an organization that is structured to take advantage of this diversity. I wonder if this could be one of the major way universities and colleges separate themselves from the pack.

Welcome to the blog. My name is Bruce Herbert and I am a professor of geology at Texas A&M University. I have been at Texas A&M since 1992, which sure seems like a long time as I write this. Over this time, I have watched myself and my colleagues struggle to handle the competing demands or tasks associated with our position as faculty members at a major research university.

Most faculty compartmentalize their research and teaching activities.  I am exploring, as part of my scholarship, the development and outcomes of integrating these central activities of faculty life.