What Helps Law Professors Develop as Teachers? -- An Empirical Study

The overall goal of this article is to provide concrete suggestions for how law schools can improve teaching and enrich law student learning. In doing so, it reviews and analyzes the data collected from two national surveys about the kinds of faculty development activities that are most effective in improving law professors’ teaching. One survey was designed to quantify how many law teachers engaged in twenty-two types of teaching development activities over the previous five years and to assess the effectiveness of each of those activities. The other survey focused on the effectiveness of a national conference on teaching and learning in law school. This article builds upon Improving Teaching and Learning in Law School: Faculty Development Research, Principles, and Programs, 12 WIDENER L. REV. 443 (2006), which presented the principles fundamental to effective faculty development programs. This article shows how these principles apply by providing data about the effectiveness of a wide range of teaching development activities

Data mining technology for the evaluation of web-based teaching and learning systems

Instructional design for Web-based teaching and learning environments causes problems for two reasons. Firstly, virtual forms of teaching and learning result in little or no direct contact between instructor and learner, making the evaluation of course effectiveness difficult. Secondly, the Web as a relatively new teaching and learning medium still requires more research into learning processes with this technology. We propose data mining – techniques to discover and extract knowledge from a database – as a tool to support the analysis of student learning processes and the evaluation of the effectiveness and usability of Web-based courses. We present and illustrate different data mining techniques for the evaluation of Web-based teaching and learning systems

Do We See Eye to Eye? Moderators of Correspondence Between Student and Faculty Evaluations of Day-to-Day Teaching

Students and instructors show moderate levels of agreement about the quality of day-to-day teaching. In the present study, we replicated and extended this finding by asking how correspondence between student and instructor ratings is moderated by time of semester and student demographic variables. Participants included 137 students and 5 instructors. On 10 separate days, students and instructors rated teaching effectiveness and challenge level of the material. Multilevel modeling indicated that student and instructor ratings of teaching effectiveness converged overall, but more advanced students and Caucasian students converged more closely with instructors. Student and instructor ratings of challenge converged early but diverged later in the semester. These results extend our knowledge about the connection between student and faculty judgments of teaching

Effectiveness of Co-Teaching

Co-Teaching is a model of teaching that was implemented to respond to the evolving policy that requires students to be instructed by highly qualified teachers in the least restrictive environment. Often this means providing special education support in the general education classroom. This poster examines the effectiveness of Co-Teaching by focusing on academic achievement, student reported benefits and parent perspectives. It also provides models and tips for educators to make their Co-Teaching more effective

How are "teaching the teachers" courses in evidence based medicine evaluated? A systematic review

Background Teaching of evidence-based medicine (EBM) has become widespread in medical education. Teaching the teachers (TTT) courses address the increased teaching demand and the need to improve effectiveness of EBM teaching. We conducted a systematic review of assessment tools for EBM TTT courses. To summarise and appraise existing assessment methods for teaching the teachers courses in EBM by a systematic review. Methods We searched PubMed, BioMed, EmBase, Cochrane and Eric databases without language restrictions and included articles that assessed its participants. Study selection and data extraction were conducted independently by two reviewers. Results Of 1230 potentially relevant studies, five papers met the selection criteria. There were no specific assessment tools for evaluating effectiveness of EBM TTT courses. Some of the material available might be useful in initiating the development of such an assessment tool. Conclusion There is a need for the development of educationally sound assessment tools for teaching the teachers courses in EBM, without which it would be impossible to ascertain if such courses have the desired effect

To what extent could Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) contribute positively to e-learning?

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) as a teaching-learning technology with the lens of the conversational framework (Laurillard 2002). The paper hopes to link commercial technological development with research in teaching-learning technologies and bring about better collaboration between the two. This theoretical evaluation aims to address the preliminary question - could educational communities adopt BPMS, a tool that has evolved from the commercial world to further enhance teaching-learning process? The scope of this paper and its evaluative study will be limited to using the conversational framework. The paper will briefly discuss BPMS and its relation to business process and business process management to provide a brief introduction. The main section of this paper will be a detailed analysis of key BPMS components against the conversational framework. The conclusion will provide a summary of the effectiveness of BPMS as a teaching-learning tool based on the requirements set out by the conversational framework. The results of the conclusion could lead to further empirical research on BPMS as a teaching-learning technology tool and may be the opportunity to request funding to carry out a proof of concept

What works in primary schools?

Olmo Silva reviews the evidence on the effectiveness of increasing resources, modifying teaching methods and introducing choice and competition. Policies to improve primary education can involve increasing the resources available to schools, modifying teaching methods or introducing elements of accountability, choice and competition into education 'markets'. Olmo Silva reviews the latest evidence on the effectiveness of these three broad areas of intervention.

Longitudinal teacher education and workforce study (LTEWS) final report

The Longitudinal Teacher Education Workforce Study (LTEWS) investigated the career progression of graduate teachers from teacher education into teaching employment in all states and territories across Australia in 2012 and the first half of 2013, and tracked their perceptions, over time, of the relevance and effectiveness of their teacher education programs. Specifically, it investigated: The career progression of the 2011 teacher education graduates from teacher education into, and possible exit from, teaching employment, including their utilisation into teaching, their retention and attrition in teaching in their early years, and their geographic and schools sector mobility; and, The views of teacher education graduates over time on the relevance and effectiveness of their teacher education for their teaching employment, including the relationship between their views of their teacher education and their early career teaching career. &nbsp