This is not a rant. As a college administrator, I am fully aware of the importance of assessment, and the bureaucratic efficiencies mandated in higher education in our country today. However, I do think it is important for academic leaders to be able to step back from the fray and the daily demands of administration and think about the philosophical and educational implications of the standards movement in higher education. Most college and university administrators are keenly aware of the standards movement in K-12 public school education, a dominant theme of contemporary education reform that has now moved to the college campus.

I wish I could erase the negative associations that surround the word improve. Improvement is not a dirty word, but it is somehow equated with the sense of deficiency—the sense that something is not right or needs to be fixed. Unfortunately these connotations premise the quest for better teaching on notions of remediation and deficiency. This doesn’t make improvement a positive, affirming process.

Have you seen this article in the June issue of the Atlantic? http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college If you haven’t, it’s definitely worth taking a look at. The writing is powerful; the message depressing at the same time it’s provocative. A very smart writing teacher I know described the piece as “a screaming canary, showing off about a dozen things going wrong in the coal mine.”

I’ve been on the road quite a bit during this past month. It will be good to be home for awhile but participating in conferences with different faculty groups and doing presentations at various sorts of institutions is a great way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of teaching and learning in higher education. You see a lot, learn lot and understand more things better.

Despite increased external pressure on teaching and learning innovation, top-down, centralized strategic initiatives usually fail to produce large-scale transformational change. And the problem with smaller-scale pedagogical innovation is that the impact is rarely felt beyond those directly involved, says Johanna Duponte, acting dean of health sciences at Bristol Community College in Massachusetts.

How do faculty approach their development as teachers? Gerlese S. Akerlind has been using a qualitative research method known as phenomenographic analysis to try to answer this question.

My blog entry for June 3 highlights some content from an article in which a chemistry prof recounts his experiences moving away from lecture. It promoted a “devil’s advocate” comment from Wendy. “When we went to college most faculty presented the material in lectures and we learned. What’s different today? Why are lectures no longer sufficient? Have learners changed?”

In my several years of teaching online I have developed a variety of time-management tools that have helped me to stay on top of my classes while making my efforts smoother and easier; hundreds of colleagues I've discussed this with over the years also have their favorite ways of managing time.

With regard to formal training events offered by teaching-learning centers at large universities, faculty members are often heard to say that training in pedagogy is useful only when situated within their discipline-specific issues.