What is Teaching Excellence?

By: Alan Hughes

College and university faculty are expected to be excellent teachers. In public, college leaders emphasize to potential students and their parents that at their institution, teaching matters above all else. Colleges seem to unabashedly promote that the teaching done by their faculty is markedly better than at peer institutions -- or that the opportunities for close working relationships between students and faculty are unique to their campus.

Many small colleges rest their laurels on the value they place on teaching excellence. From day one faculty members know that they will primarily be evaluated for tenure and promotion based on their role as teachers. Colleges and universities have Centers for Teaching Excellence to further demonstrate that they value teaching and provide support to faculty.

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Keeping Adjuncts Engaged Is Key to Helping Community-College Students Stay on Track

By: Katherine Mangan

Professional development is more important than ever for adjunct professors at community colleges, according to speakers here at the annual meeting of the League for Innovation in the Community College.

Part-time instructors teach more than half of all classes and students at community colleges but often feel only a flimsy connection to their institutions, where they're often hired at the last minute and offered little or no job security beyond that semester.

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Ten Steps to Using Twitter in the College Classroom

By: Jason A. Llorenz

Like all college and university faculty, August means finalizing fall syllabi and lesson plans, and pre-reading articles for fall courses. For many professors, this process includes thinking (or rethinking) on how to leverage social media to engage students in the semester's learning.

At Rutgers, my fall Understanding and Designing Social Media Course is designed as a hybrid -- the best of a well-structured, MOOC-style online learning environment with a robust schedule and structured activities from Tuesday-Thursday of each week, and a weekly, in-person meeting on Wednesdays.

Having experimented with social media for learning -- especially Twitter --

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