The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
Gathering concepts and techniques borrowed from outstanding college professors, The Joy of Teaching provides helpful guidance for new instructors developing and teaching their first college courses. Award-winning professor Peter Filene proposes that teaching should not be like a baseball game in which the instructor pitches ideas to students to see whether they hit or strike out. Ideally, he says, teaching should resemble a game of Frisbee in which the teacher invites students to catch ideas and
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(out of 9 reviews)
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Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
As the sixth volume of the Jossey-Bass Guides to Online Teaching and Learning series, Conquering the Content provides a highly-practical blue-print for course development and content presentation for web-based courses. While providing guidance for incorporating learning theory into online courses, this book primarily furnishes online instructors with the practical templates, learning guides, and sample files to construct and manage their course content. Unlike other books about online instru
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Additional reading on education degrees and teaching degrees college:
- The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman) Reviews
The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman) Gathering concepts and techniques borrowed from outstanding college professors, The... - The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors
The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors Gathering concepts and techniques borrowed from outstanding college professors, The Joy of Teaching provides helpful guidance... - Teaching Your First College Class: A Practical Guide for New Faculty and Graduate Student Instructors
Teaching Your First College Class: A Practical Guide for New Faculty and Graduate Student Instructors No other teaching experience will feel quite like the first time an...
Review by Paul Quigley for The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
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I read this book as part of an effort to catch my breath during Spring Break in my first semester teaching a large college class. It left me feeling re-energized and excited about the new ideas I learned, and gave me new perspective on the whole undertaking. It is chock full of really useful and thought-provoking insights and suggestions. Reading the book basically got me ready to get back to teaching with renewed enthusiasm and confidence.
I would recommend this enjoyable and extremely useful book to any college teacher looking for new ideas and techniques–even a fresh attitude toward how they approach the classroom and their students.
Review by politicalsciencephd for The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
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I felt I was still unprepared for what stepping into a classroom might be like, even after having taken a short preparatory course for social science teaching in college. I will begin teaching in a matter of weeks, and this author has helped me tremendously by pointing out some my blind spots which have been created by years of graduate school. These include the differences between how graduate students and undergrads learn (less abstract and more examples) and that one must observe the campus and the classroom in order to gauge what are reasonable expectations in terms of reading comprehension and grading. He also presents helpful guides for syllabi construction and discussion groups.
I really felt like the author was speaking to me in terms of the way I think. A wonderful, useful read!
Review by Gabriel C. Drummond-Cole for The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
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The title and several of the other reviews are misleading. This book is by far most useful as a practical guide for college instructors in the humanities. As a mathematics instructor, I found some useful information in this book, but many of the tips and techniques were irrelevant or inapplicable to my situation. I am not dissing a learning-centered approach; I read and enjoyed Ken Bain’s “What the best college teachers do.” There, I felt the material was presented with a mix of broad, theoretical ideas and very specific, discipline-grounded examples with examples ranging not just through the humanities, but also through the arts, social sciences, and physical sciences as well as mathematics. Here, while some lip service is paid to other disciplines, a good deal of the suggestions and material, particularly in the second half of the book, are only applicable within a particular range of disciplines (admittedly a broad one).
For example, chapter 7 deals with broadening the learning environment and has a number of suggestions for things to do during class besides lecture or discussion. I love the idea of doing this! Traditional math classes are lecture-driven to an incredible extent and I think this is a big part of why people outside the discipline have such a negative association with them. However, there is not one example presented in the chapter that fits with a low-level math class without a ton of shoehorning. The portion of chapter 8 on grading focuses heavily on grading essays. Only in very particular math classes will you ever have the opportunity to grade an essay.
The feeling of being aimed toward teachers in the humanities permeates the book, not just in the suggestions, but in the tone. For example, in the perfectly general section “Don’t be a perfectionist” in chapter 10, Filene says “The lecture that impresses your colleagues will fly over your students’ heads.” The implication is that if you come up with a wildly original and nuanced idea, it may be too much for undergraduate students. If you are teaching a class on the history of the civil war or constitutional law (two examples Filene repeatedly employs), I can see how this implication makes sense. If I, on the other hand, am teaching a course in remedial algebra or anywhere in a calculus sequence, it is essentially impossible for me to give a lecture whose content impresses my colleagues. I may be able to impress them with the clarity of my exposition, but not with any deep content that will fly over anyone’s head. This is one example that stuck with me because it was near the end of the book, but there were many moments like this throughout.
I do not think this is a bad book. On the contrary, every part of it felt well-researched, and the text as a whole was not flabby, which is a particular danger of this kind of book. However, I think it is marketed in a deceptive manner, and I was tricked into buying it when I am, I feel, clearly not the intended reader.
Review by Mom Academic for The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
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I really enjoyed this book because it truly helped me realize “the joy of teaching” that perhaps in my over-frenzied, over-worked state, I had missed out. While the book does have tips and ideas in it, it is primarily to help you become more reflective. It’s very short and easy to read and it’s a great place to start before moving on to more detailed or practical oriented guides like McKeachie’s Teaching Tips. If you are short on time and there is only one book you can read before you start an academic position (or if you need some reenergizing) this is the book for you.
Review by Gail A. Olson for The Joy of Teaching: A Practical Guide for New College Instructors (H. Eugene and Lillian Youngs Lehman)
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After grading your hundredth paper or reading endless homework assignments, it can be easy to forget the joy and rewards of teaching. This excellent guide renews the spirit of the teacher. Teaching really is a calling and this book affirms the joy that is available for those who share their life and knowledge with others. As well as the joy of learning from others! Teaching is really receiving from the students, watching them grow, and seeing the gifts of learning! Inspiring book for teachers!
Review by Vicky Gilpin for Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
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I’ve found many of the Jossey-Bass books to be of high quality. Robin Smith’s book does not disappoint. This slim volume is packed with excellent information that immediately gets to the “nuts and bolts” of creating an online course or developing an online course from a face-to-face course.
Many people think that crafting an online course is “easy”—you just put the same stuff on the ‘net that you use in your classes, right? Um…no.
Smith does a great job of guiding the reader through the steps of developing a course that will be engaging and effective. She is careful to note various approaches to the process.
One of the most helpful aspects, I found, was the reader-friendly set up. Something that may benefit those who think they can just “throw something on the web” and call it online learning is the emphasis on Time. Conquering the Content does an excellent job of providing timelines and realistically approaching the amount of time each step may take.
I teach face-to-face, I’ve taught hybrid courses, and I have taken years of courses online. I’m currently in a program toward a Master Online Teacher Certificate, and Smith’s book is in my “go-to” bag for every course I’ve taken. Her concise prose is straight-to-the-point and beneficial.
I highly recommend this book for educators, future educators, administrators, and stakeholders pondering implementing online learning; this book demonstrates the realities of online course development: my copy is highlighted and dog-eared—it does not just sit on a shelf and get dusty.
Review by Lydia Mong for Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
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This book is a must for anyone teaching in an online environment. If you’re just starting the transition from classroom to online, Robin M. Smith has it all there for you. Follow her exercises and recommendations and you can’t go wrong. If you have been teaching online for a while, I guarantee you’ll learn some new and very productive tricks. Every online instructor should read this book, and then keep it on the desk for easy reference.
Review by J. M. Price for Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
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Robin Smith presents helpful advice for instructors–neophytes and experienced–in organizing their course content for online delivery. Her methods are not limited to online instructors. Smith focuses on ideas like “chunk-ability” and gives several sample formats based on her ideas in the appendices that will help professors only teaching face-to-face.
If your desk looks as cluttered as mine, Smith’s book will give you sound advice to make course content organization (or re-organization) something to look forward to rather than to avoid.
Review by Marla Petal for Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
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Thank you, thank you! This is the BEST. Hand-holding you through to conversion of your first e-learning course with workbook-style guidance. I looked high and low for this and now that I have it, it has exceeded my desires. This book is extremely well-thought-out. It’s SO good that it’s also short. Robin Smith knows her stuff and shares it! Don’t despair – here is a bright light down a tunnel that doesn’t look as long as it did before…
Review by K. Borg for Conquering the Content: A Step-by-Step Guide to Online Course Design
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This book is really helpful for the beginner distance learning instructional designer. The authors gives helpful tips including:
* Set up forums to avoid incessant e-mail questions. Other students can answer many of each other’s questions.
* Set up one master list of links. Just by a few clicks on one file, you can check them prior to each term to check for bad links.
Thumbs up!