Category: Blog

by Doug Ward When Mark Mort began remaking a 100-level biology course at the University of Kansas a few years ago, he asked instructors who had taught the class what they thought students needed. “Not surprisingly, the answers were very much content, content, content,” said Mort, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a co-principal investigator on a National Science Foundation grant involving several universities in the Bay View Alliance. Then he went to … [Read more...]

The new AAAS Report on Undergraduate Teaching Improvement by Mary Taylor Huber, Senior Scholar, Bay View Alliance The “knowledge that teachers have of how students go about learning a particular subject,” is key to “good college teaching,” according to a new American Academy of Arts and Sciences report on Policies and Practices to Support Undergraduate Teaching Improvement. Written by Aaron M. Pallas, Anna Neumann, and Corbin M. Campbell, all of Teachers College, Columbia University, … [Read more...]

by Emily Miller, Associate Vice President for Policy, Association of American Universities A new article about the AAU Undergraduate STEM Education Initiative has been published in Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning. The article discusses the approach taken by AAU and identifies the cross-cutting implementation, dissemination, and institutionalization strategies from eight pilot projects and from a growing network of AAU research universities committed to improving undergraduate STEM … [Read more...]

by Emily Miller, Associate Vice President for Policy, Association of American Universities While there has been significant research conducted demonstrating that with evidence-based pedagogies, undergraduate STEM students – including underrepresented students – learn more, persist, and complete their undergraduate degrees, these proven teaching practices are not yet the norm in most undergraduate science courses. Through the Association of American Universities’ (AAU) Undergraduate STEM … [Read more...]

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Andrea Greenhoot to the recently created role of Associate Alliance Director of the BVA. The Associate Alliance Director will share responsibilities with the Alliance Director, in accordance with the recently developed BVA succession plan. The organization is fortunate in the confluence of its goals with Dea’s personal intention to engage still more deeply in understanding how to bring about widespread improvement of pedagogy in higher … [Read more...]

Two Lessons from the Assessment Movement by Pat Hutchings Are students learning what we think we’re teaching? Are they learning the concepts and abilities that matter most? These are the questions that assessment seeks to answer, and they are central to the BVA’s emphasis on advancing the use of “evidence-based” practices in the classroom. As even a quick tour through the literature on assessment makes clear, using evidence about student learning to make (and then re-assess) improvements … [Read more...]

by Pat Hutchings and Mary Huber Why does it take so long for teaching practices to change in college and university classrooms? Many faculty today are intrigued by new teaching approaches that have been shown to improve the quality and quantity of student learning. And many are experimenting with these approaches, finding ways to engage students more actively--for instance by organizing them to work in groups to solve complex problems, or asking them to apply and demonstrate their learning … [Read more...]

Three universities in the Bay View Alliance are part of a $2.8 million federal grant intended to help STEM departments provide a richer evaluation of faculty teaching and, ultimately, expand the use of practices that have shown to improve student learning. The grant, from the National Science Foundation, is part of a five-year project that includes the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the University of Colorado, Boulder, the University of Kansas (all members of the BVA), and Michigan … [Read more...]

BOULDER, Colo. – Noah Finkelstein rarely minces words, and the words he offers to public universities carry a lofty challenge. Society can make no better investment in its future than by promoting higher education, he said. It is perhaps the most fundamental form of infrastructure we have – institutions designed to influence the lives of students and build the core components of society. Pressures on these institutions have pushed them toward priorities that run counter to their founding … [Read more...]

  By Doug Ward and Mary Deane Sorcinelli BOULDER, Colo. – Symbolism sometimes makes more of a difference than money in bringing about change in higher education. That’s what Emily Miller, associate vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities, has found in her work with the AAU’s Undergraduate STEM Initiative. It’s also a strategy she has adopted as the initiative expands its work in improving undergraduate teaching and learning at research universities … [Read more...]