McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (College Teaching) [Paperback]

Wilbert McKeachie (Author), Marilla Svinicki (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 27, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0618515569 | ISBN-13: 978-0618515561 | Edition: 12

McKeachie's Teaching Tips is a handbook designed to provide helpful strategies for dealing with both the everyday problems of teaching at the university level, and those that pop up in trying to maximize learning for every student. The suggested strategies are supported by research and are grounded in enough theory to enable teachers to adapt them to their own situations. The author does not suggest a "set of recipes" to be followed mechanically, but gives teachers the tools they need to deal with the ever changing dynamics of teaching and learning.

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About This Edition

From the Publisher

New Features

• A new chapter on feedback and assessment provides recommendations on how to improve the quality of teacher feedback comments, and discusses ways of ensuring that these comments have maximum impact on learning.


• Testing chapters have been condensed into one streamlined chapter, as have the technology chapters, allowing the book to maintain its handy pocket-sized length while incorporating new information.


• All of the chapters have been updated to include new developments in technologies and instructional strategies that have become more prominent since the last edition.

Additional Features

• Guest-authored chapters offer advice and instruction from renowned educators, including Peter Elbow and Mary Deane Sorcinelli on writing, Jane Halonen on teaching thinking, and Brian P. Coppola on laboratory instruction.


• Technology coverage includes topics such as the use of Microsoft^® PowerPoint^® slides, plagiarism, and effective Web research.


• Additional important coverage includes experiential learning, recent policy shifts, diversity and gender issues, and standards and accountability.

Further reference for this edition:

Download a Transition Guide for the 13th Edition of McKeachie's Teaching Tips.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Wilbert J. McKeachie is Professor Emeritus and former chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. He is also a research scientist and past director of the University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. He has served as president of the American Psychological Association and of the American Association for Higher Education. He has also served as chair of the Committee on College and University Teaching, Research, and Publication of the American Association of University Professors. He speaks at workshops and conferences around the world and has published numerous articles in the United States and internationally.

Marilla Svinicki is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Psychology and the retired director of the Center for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned both her B.A. and M.A. at Western Michigan University and her Ph.D. at the University of Colorado. Her research interests include application of principles of learning to instruction in higher education and development of faculty and graduate students as teachers. She regularly teaches the college teaching methodology course at UT Austin along with the psychology of human learning and instructional psychology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing; 12 edition (June 27, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618515569
• ISBN-13: 978-0618515561
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #142,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent "cookbook" for college instructors, January 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (Paperback)

President Clinton wants to make college more accessible to all Americans, but to make post-secondary education more effective, he ought to first put this book in every university instructor's hands. Higher education in America is a multi-billion dollar business taught by professional researchers who often are amateur teachers. University professors, college instructors, and teaching assistants have (or are getting) Ph.D.s in their areas of expertise, but few are trained to be teachers; they know linguistics, but often know nothing about how to teach linguistics. They have Ph.D.s in chemistry, but have little understanding of how to create the "chemistry" of a good class. They are experts in political science, but are often ignorant of campus politics. This book is meant to be a one-volume guide for the new professor, the first-year teaching assistant, or the old hand who wants a new perspective. Thirty-four short chapters tackle every subject and problem from "Teaching Large Classes" to "Teaching in the Age of Electronic Information," from "Organizing Effective Discussions" to "How to Win Friends and Influence Custodians." These chapters are pithy, often tantalizing and sometimes too brief, but each has a short list of references and the volume as a whole has a very good bibliography. This is a book that everyone who teaches college should own. It is a manual, a "cookbook," a list of suggestions. It does not have a single agenda nor does it push a particular method. Don't look to this book for long-winded obscure discussions of theories of cognition, methodology or extensive research notes. It is not the last word in pedagogy, but it probably should be the first.

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best handbook I have found for university teachers., November 4, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Teaching Tips : Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (Paperback)

I appreciate that the new views of learning are accounted for and applied by the author(s) of this book. I like the new chapters about using new technology in teaching and about helping students to learn and how to plan for students' independent study. The hints in every chapter about books and articles for further study are very helpful. It is easy to understand why this book is one of the most popular handbooks about university teaching not only in the US but also in Europe. Many copies of the earler editions have been sold in Finland and Sweden. It is very useful also for teachers in vocational education and training. Every new college teacher should have this book. However, many experienced teachers will also get a lot of ideas from it.

When a book like this appears in ten editions it must be a proof that many professors and university teachers have found it useful. And ... this tenth edition is still better than the earlier versions. To me it is the handbook # 1 for university teaching. No wonder that professor McKeachie has been called "Mr Improving University Teaching"

Rainer Nyberg, EdD. Professor of Education, Abo Akademi University, Finland

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Wheat And Chaff, May 19, 2009

By 

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This review is from: McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (College Teaching) (Paperback)

I was given this book when I began teaching graduate students; the school gave it out to all new professors and instructors in an attempt to apprise the new faculty members of current teaching theory. I was the first of the staff (most of whom were technical professionals teaching higher level technical classes) to actually read the book cover to cover, and came away with decidedly mixed opinions.

McKeachie has spent his entire adult life in a social science classroom, and while his methods may be well suited to areas like psychology or schools of education, I don't believe that his tips are universally applicable, especially in courses that have more concrete content (e.g. math, science, engineering, etc.) Many of his tips are concrete, and in general I found these to be excellent. In particular the discussions about how to handle cheating, plagiarism, and academic dishonesty were very insightful, as were the discussions of problem students, and in particular "attention seekers and students who dominate discussions" (p.179,) a problem I encountered in my second term of teaching. His discussion of grading in Chapter 15 is also generally quite good, and while I disagree with some of his reasoning (p.198) on using criteria grids for grading, I was pleased to see his defense of allowing a single overwhelming failure in one part of the grid to reduce the overall project grade to unsatisfactory (p. 206.)

While the real-world aspects of this book are generally quite good, some of his theories are inappropriate for a college classroom. In particular he discusses the technique of telling a class at the start of a term that he will give everyone a B in the course to reduce their apprehension, but that to get an A will require individual merit. Needless to say this is an unsatisfactory technique. Everyone has apprehension and fears, including the fear of academic failure. This type of social promotion, rooted in promotion of student self esteem, has no place in a college classroom; these students are becoming adults, and with the freedoms that entails come responsibilities. This is a policy that harms the students in the long run, potentially promoting them into follow-on courses they are woefully unprepared for, and obviously encouraging inattention to the material in all but the genuinely self-motivated students. It is also unfair to students taking another professor's section of the course who don't have a guaranteed B, students who have to actually work for their C, the supposed average grade. McKeachie's technique is a recipe for grade inflation, which is of enormous concern to universities today.

Another issue with the book is the tendency to hide behind the trendy doubletalk so popular in social sciences and schools of education. McKeachie speaks of a "dyad" when he could just use the word "pair" or "two" depending on context. This kind of language permeates much of the book, and should be purged in the next edition. Quick: how many people can tell me what "armamentarium" means without looking it up? I thought so.

While I found parts of this book rewarding, much of it is questionable academic theory, and much of the book is not applicable to concrete scientifically based courses, especially hard sciences, mathematics, or engineering. When he discusses real-world classroom problems the text is generally good, but there are numerous places where I completely disagree with him (most students I know loathe group projects, for instance, his theories notwithstanding; I certainly did when I was a student.)

If you are in need of advice on how to run your classroom I recommend this book with a caveat: take heed of information on how to deal with specific issues; beware of some of the more esoteric theoretical information.