Customer Reviews

Successful College Teaching: Problem-Solving Strategies of Distinguished Professors

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This book combines practicality with theory, giving ideas for improving college teaching to the rank and file--college teachers themselves--and the department chairs and administrators who support them.

What is striking is the readability of this book--no scholarly tome guaranteed to cure insomnia, this one! Baiocco and DeWaters write in a flowing style that invites the reader into the conversation about teaching and makes this reader stand back and admire the way they use words. The descriptions of the classrooms of the award-winning teachers--"Studies in Excellence"--are thought-provoking; they show how excellent teachers differ from one another but have some beliefs about teaching in common.

Altogether the best book about college teaching I've seen. I'd recommend it to beginners and seasoned teachers alike.

This book is a great resource to have in order to improve excellence in teaching, especially in our days, days of frequent changes,days of a growing technology which put at risk the future role of the educator and days of frequent evaluation about the effectiveness of teaching. The authors do a great job bringing the opinion of the 30 award winning professors and some of their tips toward excellence in teaching, a real good quality we need badly in our educational system at all levels.I hope this book will be translate in spanish very soon, as you all now this population is growing very fast in the states and spanish speakers teachers will benefits fron this book valuable content.

As a college professor myself, I was interested in this book's title, especially the prospect of strategies of successful teachers "in the trenches." I enjoyed this part of the book immensely. Unfortunately, it proved to be only a portion of what I wanted.

The first fifty-three pages of the book do not talk about successful teachers at all, but bring up all the challenges which professors face from both college students and administrations today. While some may find this enriching, especially those faculty with an interest in assessment and evaluation, I found it boring.

Finally, Chapter 4 arrived. Here were case studies of ten award-winning teacher scholars. Each entry detailed a class observed in meticulous detail and included highlights from a follow-up interview with the professor.

I had expected the rest of the book to analyze the successful strategies of all the professors and come up with some healthy conclusions, but it only came up with generic results, no specific answers. For example, successful professors seem to express "emotional intelligence." Great. Successful professors also are good at noticing students' attitudes and needs in class and adjusting quickly to satisfy those needs.

The rest of the book was similar to the opening few pages. It discussed the problems of dealing with diverse students, systemic problems with lack of training for Teaching Assistants, and the need for a comprehensive program for faculty development.

While the book is well written and seems to be very well-documented (numerous, current sources), I feel as if the book is not exactly what the cover makes it out to be. This book may be of particular interest to a professor involved in the region of faculty assessment or professors in Education departments, but I found it lacking in the areas of solid teaching strategies.

I did receive some good ideas for my own use in teaching, but I would recommend other books like McKeachie's Teaching Tips before this one.