The ability of colleges and universities to implement strategic academic decisions is constantly challenged by a variable external environment, mounting public expectations, and evolving academic priorities. Although academic decision making is often dismissed by critics both inside and outside higher education as slow, parochial, and ineffective, institutions can and have developed processes to effectively address today's complex challenges. With the proper attention by administrative, faculty, and trustee leaders, academic decision making can comprise a robust set of processes essential to defining the mission, priorities, and activities of colleges and universities. This book explores the intersection of academic decision making with contemporary, cutting-edge challenges for which no simple solution exists. It moves the issue of decision making outside the contested arena of stakeholder responsibilities, and presents a series of distinct and unique chapters that illustrate how colleges and universities are creating and sustaining dynamic and effective decision-making processes. Issues such as entrepreneurial and commercial strategies, changing research infrastructure, inter-institutional cooperation, evolving expectations for student involvement and campus community, and technology and its required investments create ongoing challenges that colleges and universities must address. To respond to these challenges, campus leaders often cannot draw upon their wealth of experience or time-tested processes. Instead, they must find new ways to create and use decision-making structures and processes. Furthermore, as the issues change, the people, their roles, and their interactions will be different. In some cases, new people will enter the decision-making arena: For instance, students may play stronger roles, as may trustees or outside stakeholders including faculty from other institutions involved in joint academic degree programs. Faculty roles may also change as institutions become more entrepreneurial, wi

Discover how award-winning schools advance students’ learning through technology!

A companion to the best-selling Leading 21st Century Schools, this inspiring book profiles eight visionary schools and how they approach technology. Hear directly from the principals, teachers, superintendents, and other educators involved as they describe their strategies for:

Becoming a school culture that embraces technology and 21st century skills Creating a 21st century classroom, including new instructional approaches and professional development opportunities Selecting the right technology strategy, infrastructure, and devices  Managing costs through funding and budget strategies Measuring progress through effective use of data

A groundbreaking guide to facilitating online and blended courses

This comprehensive resource offers teachers in grades K-12 a hands-on guide to the rapidly growing field of online and blended teaching. With clear examples and explanations, Kristin Kipp shows how to structure online and blended courses for student engagement, build relationships with online students, facilitate discussion boards, collaborate online, design online assessments, and much more.

Shows how to create a successful online or blended classroom Illustrates the essential differences between face-to-face instruction and online teaching Foreword by Susan Patrick of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning

This is an essential handbook for learning how to teach online and improve student achievement.

Essentials for Blended Learning: A Standards-Based Guide provides a practical, streamlined approach for creating effective learning experiences by blending online activities and the best of face-to-face teaching.

This guide is:

Easy to use: Clear, jargon-free writing; illustrations; and references to online resources help readers understand concepts.

Streamlined: A simple but effective design process focuses on creating manageable activities for the right environment.

Practical: Real-world examples from different subject areas help teachers understand principles in context.

Contemporary: The variety of modern, connected technologies covered in the guide addresses a range of teaching challenges.

Forward-Looking: The approach bridges the gap between formal classroom learning and informal lifelong learning.

Standards-based: Guidelines and standards are based on current research in the field, relevant learning theories, and practitioner experiences.

Effective blended learning requires significant rethinking of teaching practices and a fundamental redesign of course structure. Essentials for Blended Learning: A Standards-Based Guide simplifies these difficult challenges without neglecting important opportunities to transform teaching. This guide is suitable for teachers in any content area.

Please visit www.essentialsforblended.com for additional resources.

Creative ways to build powerful and effective online courses with Moodle 3.0About This BookUnleash your teaching talents and develop exciting, dynamic coursesPut together effective online courses that motivate students from all backgrounds, generations, and learning stylesFind powerful insights into developing more successful and educational coursesWho This Book Is For

If you want to unleash your teaching talents and develop exciting, dynamic courses that really get students moving forward, then this book is for you. Experienced Moodlers who want to upgrade to Moodle 3.0 will find powerful insights into developing more successful and educational courses.

What You Will LearnCreate a dynamic learning environment using different techniquesMotivate your students to collaborate and demonstrate what they are learning and to create projects togetherDevelop materials you can re-use in your future coursesCreate online workshops and galleries for your students to make presentations about what they have learnedEngage your students in team work that helps them connect course content with their experiences and prior learningDevelop high-quality courses that will last to create a personal inventory you can use and re-useIn Detail

Moodle, the world's most popular, free open-source Learning Management System (LMS) has released several new features and enhancements in its latest 3.0 release. More and more colleges, universities, and training providers are using Moodle, which has helped revolutionize e-learning with its flexible, reusable platform and components.

This book brings together step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions to leverage the full power of Moodle 3 to build highly interactive and engaging courses that run on a wide range of platforms including mobile and cloud.

Beginning with developing an effective online course, you will write learning outcomes that align with Bloom's taxonomy and list the kinds of instructional materials that will work given one's goal. You will gradually move on to setting up different types of forums for discussions and incorporating multi-media from cloud-base sources. You will then focus on developing effective timed tests, self-scoring quizzes while organizing the content, building different lessons, and incorporating assessments. Lastly, you will dive into more advanced topics such as creating interactive templates for a full course by focussing on creating each element and create workshops and portfolios which encourage engagement and collaboration

Style and approach

With clear, step-by-step instructions, this book helps you develop good, solid, dynamic courses that will last by making sure that your instructional design is robust, and that they are built around satisfying learning objectives and course outcomes. Packed with plenty of screenshots and practical examples, you will get solid understanding of developing courses that are a success in the real world.