Teaching for Learning: 101 Intentionally Designed Educational Activities to Put Students on the Path to Success

by Claire Howell Major, Michael S. Harris, Todd D. Zakrajsek

Despite a growing body of research on teaching methods, instructors lack a comprehensive resource that highlights and synthesizes proven approaches. Teaching for Learning fills that gap. Each of the one hundred and one entries:

describes an approach and lists its essential features and elements

demonstrates how that approach has been used in education, including specific examples from different disciplines

reviews findings from the research literature

describes techniques to improve effectiveness.

Teaching for Learning provides instructors with a resource grounded in the academic knowledge base, written in an easily accessible, engaging, and practical style.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction

340 pages, Hardcover

Published September 25, 2015

Reviews

[Vanessa M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book offers 101 varied teaching methods to instructors who teach at the university level. My husband's former PMS (Professor of Military Science) recommended all cadre and staff in the Army ROTC program to read this. I read this in order to have discussions with my hubby about it and as I'm not an educator I'm not the best person to write a review (though I will say a few things) 🙂

The methods are broken down into conceptual areas and each idea has one to three pairing ideas from the book to create teaching combinations. I was impressed by this.

The ideas are heavily referenced with previous studies and data to support them.

My husband's role in the ROTC program is supply management and not every idea is applicable to what he does per se but I can see him using some of these methods when he dispenses uniforms and gear and when he helps to co-teach a class or lend support to the weekly lab sessions.

I can see workplace trainers, high school educators, and religious educators gleaning ideas from this book as well. It was highly readable and interesting to me. I think it's a good resource for those in the teaching field.

[Mary Havens · Rating 4 out of 5]

In terms of ideas, this book is fabulous! Literally 100 teaching ideas organized by concept. In fact, the entire organization was awesome and very easy to read. I was able to implement some of them this semester and am looking forward to going back through the book and reviewing others.
That being said, I did read it cover to cover for a fellowship I am participating in. There were many ideas that I probably should have skipped but I felt that the amount of time/effort in reading them all was minimal so I pushed through. There were definitely chapters that I felt like "what's the point of this?" when I could not or did not see a way to implement the ideas.
My main beef is the editing. There were many, MANY times that extra words appeared or were left out entirely. Sloppy and not the fault of the authors (maybe).
I'm a sucker for a great bibliography and this book has it in spades at the end of each chapter. I'm looking forward to digging deeper into some of these concepts/teaching activities as I prepare for my fellowship proposal.
All in all: take a look! If you can't find anything in here to change your classroom, you aren't looking hard enough because there are literally 100 ideas!!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been slowly reading this book for quite some time now as there is just so much to digest and even more to think about after that. I recommend this text to anyone who teaches, and I recommend you get a copy for your desk and open it frequently for ideas as opposed to committing to read the entire book -- you will become overwhelmed and over-inspired (can that happen?) as idea after idea races through your head. So only read the part you need when you need it. Another idea to tackle this book is to form a reading group where each person reads a chapter and shares salient points and how they might use one idea in their classroom.

Each chapter presents a teaching method, such as lecturing, then offers activities for incorporating that teaching method. The suggested activities are grounded in research, are detailed enough to easily follow, and are followed by "pro-tips" which are nuggets of information from the authors on pitfalls to avoid and considerations to think about -- go buy a copy!

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for educators - new and experienced. Uses multiple research studies (documented) to identify 100 tested ways to enhance your teaching interaction with students to facilitate greater learning. Divided in chapters highlighting different basic concepts such as lectures, discussion, games, writing, and reflection, the authors show how to redesign your teaching methods to be more interesting to your students and lead to more engagement. The book also suggests ways to combine the different concepts, multiplying their effect. Highly recommended.

[Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

pg 10 "Findings further suggest that providing students with skeletal notes may work better than providing them with a full set of notes or transcript of hte lecture (Kiewra, 2002)"

page 31 - lecture bingo "The instructor makes out bingo cards comprising of terms from the upcoming lecture. Students listen for terms and then cross them off when they hear them in class." Good for content that is factual, conceptual, or early in a block of materials when students have little foundational knowledge of the information

page 131 - feedback in critical in game activities (Issenberg, McGaghie, Petrusa, Gordon, Scalese 2005)

page 303 protips for metacognitive reflection
"Today I learned is what is known as sentence stem..."
Today I learned...
I don't understand...
I would like to learn more about...
Three things I learned today are...
The thing that surprised me today was...

[Mare · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe the best toolkit of pedagogical strategies I've ever read. So many ideas to enhance teaching and learning.

[Audrey Webber · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must have book for any person who is teaching any subject in any context. This provides so many creative ways of delving into any subject.

[Courtney Albers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Practical ways to improve teaching for learning!

[Zack]

A reference book for newer faculty.