Customer Reviews

Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors (JB - Anker Series)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Dr. Linda B. Nilson has spent a good part of her professional career in higher education speaking, writing, and teaching about how to be an effective college instructor. Her latest contribution to that effort, Teaching at its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, 2nd Edition, may be the most comprehensive work to date on the subject.

This is a "real world" book about teaching at the college level. Written in a comfortable 2nd person style, it takes a would-be instructor through all the steps from preparing to teach to evaluating how effective the instruction has been. The discussion on understanding different learning styles and using appropriate teaching strategies to reach diverse learners is straight forward and easy to understand.

In her preface to the book, Nilson says that "Like the first edition, this revision is designed primarily for use in colleges and universities with high standards of instructional excellence". Believe it - and don't teach without it!

Linda has done an excellent job of compiling and explaining some of the best available techniques for teaching and survival as a professor in the modern university environment. The text is highly readable and extremely practical. I have taught for 24 years in a variety of colleges and each time I open the book I find something new to try.

I have been avidly reading this book in preparation for the fall semester, and was prepared to give it 5 stars until I reached pg. 225. Here, the author states "Given that the social sciences rely on flawed data and analyses and ideologically shaded theories, the standards for evidence are more relaxed than they are in the physical and biological sciences." Everything else is the book is backed up by peer-reviewed references, but this is purely the opinion of the author (no citations). Before the quote stated above, she says that social scientists rarely do experimental research, our research is invalid or unreliable, and our statistical methods inaccurate. Normally I would just pass this off as ignorance and move on, but this book is meant to educate faculty, and furthering this stigma of psychology (or other social sciences) as not being "real science" only further divides the scientific community. Informing students that they "must learn to view their own research results results as probabilistic, tentative, and subject to debate" is demoralizing, and a bit hypocritical - are not all research results, even in the physical and biological sciences, also tentative and open to debate? Even the Theory of Relativity is still a theory...

Other than this clearly biased section of the book, it does contain several helpful ideas for teaching. Many can also be found online, but there are a few new things I had never before considered, and it is nice to have the research to back it up (research collected by social scientists, I might add - does that mean these sources are flawed?) The sections on group learning and writing assignments were especially helpful in my planning. I would definitely recommend it, but be aware that if you are in the field of social sciences, you may feel frustrated by some of the inferences throughout the book, especially in the section mentioned above.

This book is a great resource for teachers in general and college profs in particular. It presents solid, innovative pedagogical ideas in a practical context. My copy is becoming worn out from nearly constant use.

The book came "new" exactly as ordered in a quick time. The book is required for a class Im taking.

We recommend this book for all our new faculty and in our teaching graduate course. it covers all the basics and more!

This is a must-have book for college faculty. I use it to assist new faculty in developing their teaching abilities and I found many good ideas to improve my syllabus, enhance classroom interactions and help in creating an effective program for evaluating teacher effectiveness. My only complaint is that it is hard to get--too bad that such a valuable resource can't come via overnight express!

on 7/2/10 jacklyn at jjjjshaw wrote: Nilson's work includes an overview with update for the times. . . Explanations are insightful on terms and trends, yet forthright for professional practice. . . As an aside, do we have to be degreed in sociology to be a universal writer? Anyway, check it out.

If you are teaching at the college-level or higher, this book is full of great ideas on everything from setting the tone in the first class to assessing students. Making your classes ones they look forward to attending.

This book came recommended to me from my Professor as a valuable reference for my first year teaching college students. The books description matched the condition.