Books

Building Online Learning Communities
Second Edition of Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace
By Rena M. Ralloff and Keith Pratt

Book Review: Building Online Learning Communities further explores the development of virtual classroom environments that foster a sense of community and empower students to take charge of their learning to successfully achieve learning outcomes. This is the second edition of the groundbreaking book by Rena Palloff and Keith Pratt and has been completely updated and expanded to include the most current information on effective online course development and delivery. A practical, hands-on guide, this resource is filled with illustrative case studies, vignettes and examples from a wide variety of successful online courses.

Written for faculty in any distance learning environment, this revised edition is based on the authors' many years of work in faculty development for online teaching as well as their extensive personal experience as faculty in online distance education. Rena M. Palloff and Keith Pratt share insights designed to guide readers through the steps of online course design and delivery.

Teaching At Its Best
A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors
By Linda B. Nilson

This best-selling handbook is an essential toolbox-a compilation of hundreds of practical teaching techniques, formats, classroom activities and exercises-meant to give classroom instructors a go-to guide for help teaching any subject matter. It is for those who teach in traditional contexts as well as those who teach adult and diverse student populations; it is for those who use considerable technology and multimedia resources as well as those who rely on conventional classroom methods.

Professional Development for School Improvement
Empowering Learning Communities
by Stepen P. Gordon

From the Back Cover
"This is excellent material. It is easy to read and comprehend and it is arranged in a useful manner."
Dr. Sandra Lowery
Stephen F. Austin State University

Professional Development for School Improvement: Empowering Learning Communities, First Edition integrates knowledge from professional development and school improvement to describe frameworks that can increase the capacity of individuals, teams and organizations to grow and develop.

The book argues that both professional development and school improvement should have as their primary purpose the improvement of teaching and learning. Eleven frameworks for professional development are presented, along with strategies for integrating multiple frameworks in comprehensive programs. These frameworks of successful professional development programs include: training, peer coaching, collaborative work teams, co-teaching, study groups, action research, teacher writing, teacher leadership, partnerships, networks and teacher centers. School leader development is addressed as a prerequisite for professional and school development. Leader, cultural, team and teacher development are described as capacity building functions of professional development. Abundant learning tools such as Case Studies, Chapter Problems, Discussion Questions, Charts and Summaries in every chapter help reinforce chapter concepts.

Facilitating Online Learning
Effective Strategies for Moderators
By George Collison, Bonnie Elbaum, Sarah Haavind and Robert Tinker

"Facilitating Online Learning: Effective Strategies for Moderators" is Atwood Publishing's latest title and one of your greatest resources for distance education. It will help you build an online community and fuel online dialogue to create relationships between interactants. It will also provide you with a wide repertoire of strategies for sharpening your course's content and ways to fend off and avoid technological problems and roadblocks that you will invariably face during your class.

Teaching Online
A Practical Guide - 2nd Edition, 2004
Susan Ko and Steve Rossen

Teaching Online is a practical, concise guide for instructors teaching distance-learning courses or instructors supplementing a traditional classroom with online elements. This pocket-sized, portable book can be used as either a course text or a professional resource. ISBN: 978-0-618-29848-8.

Assessment Clear and Simple
A Practical Guide for Institutions, Departments and General Education
by Barbara E. Walvoord

Assessment Clear and Simple is "Assessment 101" in a book - a concise and step-by-step guide written for everyone who participates in the assessment process. This practical book helps to make assessment simple, cost-efficient and useful to the institution, while at the same time meeting the requirements of accreditation agencies, legislatures, review boards and others.

Assessing Student Learning
a common sense guide
by Linda Suskie

Interest in assessing student learning at institutions of higher education-and the need to learn how to do it-continues to gather the attention and support begun nearly 30 years ago. This book summarizes contemporary thinking on the practice of assessing student learning in a comprehensive, accessible and useful fashion. This book is short on background and theory and long on practical advice. Plainspoken and informally written, it offers sensible guidance for assessment practitioners on all aspects of student assessment and for faculty who simply want to improve assessment within their classrooms. Assessing Student Learning presents readers with well-informed principles and options that they can select and adapt to their own circumstances.
Linda Suskie, currently the Vice President of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, has worked for 30 years in higher education assessment, institutional research, strategic planning and continuous improvement.

Classroom Assessment Techniques
A Handbook for College Teachers
2nd Edition

This revised and greatly expanded edition of the 1988 handbook offers teachers at all levels how-to advise on classroom assessment, including:

• What classroom assessment entails and how it works.
• How to plan, implement and analyze assessment projects.
• Twelve case studies that detail the real-life classroom experiences of teachers carrying out successful classroom assessment projects.
• Fifty classroom assessment techniques
• Step-by-step procedures for administering the techniques
• Practical advice on how to analyze your data

Websites

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