WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

This is a document that contains a table of best practices, tools and uses for building critical thinking skills while teaching online. It is based on a document called: Designing Online Instruction that Develops Critical and Creative Thinking Skills, Paula Jones, ABD, MaryAnn Kolloff, Ed D Fred Kolloff, Ph D; With additions and suggestions from: Office for Teaching and Learning, WSU

Best Practices Compilation

The Institute for Detroit  Studies at Marygrove College has developed a fascinating map of the Detroit area. It reports on some 24 different locations, providing pictures and examples of how the location appeared in literary works. Wayne State University is one of the locations, of course! Have a look at the map here.

Faculty might be interested in following the growing campaign focused on reducing the costs of textbooks. Perhaps the fastest window into this work is the maketextbooksaffordable.org website.

Recently, legislation passed in the House of Representatives that would, if passed in the Senate as well, involve 3 components.

1. Requires publishers to disclose textbook pricing and revision information up-front to faculty
2. Requires publishers to offer textbooks and supplemental materials “unbundled” (separately)
3. Requires institutions, to the maximum extent practicable, to provide the list of required and recommended textbooks (including prices and ISBNs) when students register for classes.

There is also growing support for open access textbooks. Faculty are being encouraged to sign the Open Textbooks Statement found online here.

Yesterday’s symposium here at Wayne State was a very interesting start to our “Year of the Journal” explorations. As most faculty are aware, the cost of library journal subscriptions continues to rise (9% per year on average), more journals are being created, but very few journals cease publication. This presents a tremendous challenge for the library budget.

The symposium was designed to help us (faculty and library staff and administrators) start thinking strategically and cooperatively about this important topic. Paul Courant, university librarian and dean of the University Library at the University of Michigan presented a fascinating talk on “Journal Subscriptions, Scholarly Communications and Academic Libraries in the Age of Google.” The University of Michigan is a partner with Google in a major book digitization effort and Courant talked about some of the implications of this shift in access to scholarly content. We also heard a review of copyright law in the digital age presented by Attorney Kathryn Ossian. This led into a panel discussion looking at the various needs and expectations of faculty in different disciplines and academic journal staff and librarians.

Clearly, we need to work together on finding ways to provide faculty with access to high quality scholarly content without digging ourselves into a financial hole that will be hard to climb out of. If the level of discussion was any indication, we’re off to a good start.