It’s the week for being thankful, and I’m thinking gratefully about my pedagogical colleagues—those faculty friends and compatriots with whom I can talk teaching.

I am pleased to announce the Second Annual McGraw-Hill and Magna Publications Award for Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning. You’ll find all the details on The Teaching Professor website (www.teachingprofessor.com), including how to submit pieces (your work and that of others), the selection criteria, and the review process. In case you’ve forgotten, a $1,000 award goes to the author or is shared by authors of the winning article, which will be announced at the 2010 Teaching Professor Conference.

My much-loved Aunt Barbara died last week, 10 days past her 100th birthday. It was time—her mind had left her several years ago.

Larry Ragan, director of faculty development for Penn State World Campus, may have given a new spin to the old expression “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Except, unlike the philosophical musing that’s become immortalized as one of those motivational posters, Ragan’s focus is on improving online learning.

Teaching and learning support professionals, particularly those who must perform miracles as a “Department of One,” can have one of the most challenging jobs on campus. They not only support the course design, content delivery strategies, technology integration, and training/orientation for faculty and students in online learning programs (asynchronous and synchronous formats), but they also support all other teaching/learning needs for classroom, blended, and any other teaching environment. This professional may be an instructional designer, an educational technologist, or very often, a designated faculty member with some or all of these skills.

I’m sure it’s pretty clear by now that pedagogical literature is one of my main passions. I am totally convinced that reading good materials on teaching and learning helps faculty improve instructional practice at the same time it motivates the effort good teaching requires. I am equally convinced that most teachers don’t read as much of this literature as they should, although readers of this blog are probably exceptions. To advance the cause of scholarship on teaching and learning, as in to make more faculty aware of good resources, I read widely, across disciplines, around and between them. It makes my day when I discover something new, albeit with chagrin when I don’t discover it in as timely a manner as I should.

I’m home from another successful Teaching Professor Conference and couldn’t be more pleased with how things went. For three days, we had more than 600 enthusiastic participants soaking up everything the conference offers. Whether it was the viewing posters after the keynote Friday night, interacting with new colleagues before and after sessions, or showing up for the last scheduled concurrent session, participants were there, sharing insights, asking questions, making comments, disagreeing, offering examples, and learning from each other. By Sunday afternoon, most of us were talked out about teaching, but energized (if not a bit exhausted) by the many valuable exchanges.

An article in the January-February issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching reports on the experiences of a group of life sciences faculty who participated in a faculty learning community. “We wanted to bring together life sciences faculty members who would discuss and support each others’ teaching and learning goals, breaking down the communication barrier that characterizes most teaching activities in the sciences.” (p. 39)

On Tuesday’s post, we discussed an Oxford University study that looked at departments recognized for their excellence in teaching at 11 research-intensive universities in Europe, Australia, and North America.