Effective teaching is closely linked to student success, but evidence-based practices are still not widely used in higher education, finds a white paper released this week by the American Council on Education (ACE).

“Instruction matters,” concludes the paper, Unpacking Relationships: Instruction and Student Outcomes. “And higher education needs to provide support for faculty to help students attain outcomes.”

The paper’s author, Natasha Jankowski, discussed her findings with senior administrators, faculty developers, and college educators in a webinar hosted by ACE on Tuesday. During the discussion, Jankowski said that evidence-based teaching practices are usually limited to small pockets on campuses. “They’re not happening at a scale in which you can see an impact,” said Jankowski, director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.

College leaders echoed those sentiments during the one-hour webinar.

“We are quite concerned about scale–and reaching our 990 adjuncts,” wrote one participant from Cal State LA, citing Cal State LA’s partnership with ACUE to address the challenge.

ACUE and ACE have teamed up to address scalability concerns and dramatically improve student outcomes through effective instruction. Faculty who satisfy ACUE Course requirements earn a Certificate in Effective College Instruction endorsed by ACE, a distinction that shows they have learned and applied evidence-based approaches in the classroom.

In the paper, Jankowski writes that success hinges on whether students are learning from proven instructional methods and in engaged learning environments. She focuses on five “areas of intersection” between instruction and student outcomes:

1. Transparency to ensure teaching and learning is visible to all students and that they have a clear understanding by which they will be assessed.
2. Pedagogical approaches that include research-based practices such as active learning,  flipped classrooms, service learning, and problem-based learning.
3. Assessments that are inherently embedded in teaching and learning.
4. Self-regulation and the role of students’ active engagement in their own learning.
5. Alignment of various elements within a learning environment, such as content, instructional design, and assignment.

Additional ACUE resources related to these topics:

• ACUE’s Expert Series article on transparent instruction featuring Mary-Ann Winkelmes
• ACUE’s Effective Practice Framework covers the essential college teaching practices, organized across five units
• ACUE’s Assessing to Inform Instruction and Promote Learning unit, which includes the Checking for Student Understanding module
• ACUE’s Expert Series article on metacognition, featuring Saundra McGuire
• ACUE’s Designing an Effective Course and Class unit, which includes modules on Aligning Assessments With Course Outcomes and Aligning Activities and Assignments with Course Outcomes

This week in higher ed news, embracing imperfection in the classroom and discovering students’s hidden talents.

Redesigning teaching. In an interview with ACUE, Michael Wesch discusses what inspired him to change his teaching and explains why instructors should understand their students’ lives inside and outside the classroom. (The ‘Q’ Blog)

Embracing imperfection. Taking risks and encouraging students to accept that their work may not be flawless can inspire creativity and experimentation for both students and instructors. (ProfHacker)

Writing outside the box. A composition instructor explains why the essay topics he assigns are mere suggestions and encourages students to write about what interests them. (Vitae)

Detecting secret skills. Ellen Fiedler writes that different learning approaches in class, research projects, and one-on-one mentorship can help unearth students’ hidden talents. (The Scholarly Teacher)

Democratic involvement. Many colleges are exploring ways to promote civic engagement in students, such as integrating ideological issues and fieldwork into curricula. (The Chronicle of Higher Education – Paywall)

Facing problems. In response to new challenges this year, colleges should confront issues head on and find ways to increase school value for students, Lisa Rudgers and Julie Peterson say. (Inside Higher Ed)

Liberal learning. Wesleyan University President Michael Roth opines that liberal education must foster an exchange of ideas across disciplines, promote intellectual diversity, and support the sharing of knowledge if it is to thrive. (The Washington Post)

Background schooling. A college junior explains how his chosen disciplines help him reframe his identity. (The New York Times)

Community college benefits. Responding to the suggestion that community colleges should strictly provide vocational training, one dean clarifies that two-year colleges offer an array of educational pathways. (Confessions of a Community College Dean)

Art of organizing. Google Forms allows instructors to upload documents, making it easier collect and organize student work. (ProfHacker)

Revealing personas. Presentation is integral to teaching, and instructors should be their genuine selves in the classroom, Rachel Toor writes. (Vitae)

Dr. Michael Wesch, a subject matter expert in ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, is in the spotlight for ACUE’s first Expert Series of 2017.

Dr. Wesch, associate professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University, offers illuminating insights about what prompted him to change his approach to teaching, the pitfalls of a fixed mindset, and how to drive student outcomes by helping students identify with the person they aspire to become. Accompanying Dr. Wesch this month are video interviews with his students explaining how his teaching techniques keep them more engaged in class and motivated to learn.

How do you define deep learning?

I think you have to contrast deep learning with “superficial” or “strategic” learning. Strategic learning is where you’re trying to learn for the test, whereas deep learning is really about a transformation of the self. Strategic learning tends to be temporary and largely driven toward extrinsic rewards that are also temporary, and ultimately is unlikely to be transformed into knowledge that can be used in other domains. For deep learning, you set out with a very different intention: changing yourself and absorbing the material for long-term growth.

What inspired you to rethink your approach to teaching? 

As a student, I was strategic to absurdity. I simply wanted to get an A and I would do the minimum amount of work for it. Nothing I was reading inspired me enough to take it home. I was able to strategically get the things I needed out of a book by skimming and pulling out the main points.

And then one day I just fell in love with reading and the stuff I was learning. When I first started teaching, I forgot that my students were doing the same thing I used to do—just skimming the material and finding the information. I made a lot of assumptions when I first started teaching: Of course people are going to love this stuff the way I love this stuff. Why wouldn’t they love this material?

And I assumed that it was “the stuff” that mattered. So I assigned readings that I thought were really exciting.

It really became apparent that my students were not engaged in deep learning when I noticed that they were asking questions like “What’s gonna be on the test?” That’s a clear indication of strategic learning. That was the trigger that there was just this total disconnect between me and my students. So that led to the whole flip and a lot of changes in how I teach.

What are some fixed mindset traps that faculty should avoid?

It’s very easy to fall into a fixed mindset trap, especially as a professor, because a fixed mindset is where you’re keeping score about how smart you are. Professors tend to be very smart. In most situations you’re the smartest person in the room within your domain, so I think the first fixed mindset trap is feeling like you know everything, and that whatever’s going wrong with the classroom has to do with the students and not you. It’s much more useful to assess what you’re doing and how you can change what you’re doing to change the classroom.

The second trap is just sort of a depressed feeling of not being good enough. I think that strikes professors all the time because we’re often facing classes where people are glazed over and tuning out and on their smartphones. Some of us, like myself, take that very hard. You fall into this trap where you take all that information that clearly things aren’t going well and you internalize it as your own fault. You then relate that to a fixed trait of yourself. You say to yourself “Well I’m just not that charismatic and I just can’t tell a good story” or “I just can’t do x, y, or z.” It’s similar to when a student says “I’m just not a math person.” So I think we have to recognize that we all have these weaknesses, that doesn’t mean that we’re stuck with them forever. Just do a little bit to get a little better every day.

What advice do you have for veteran instructors to encourage them to continue learning and creating? 

The simple thing is to always be trying something new; novelty is really important to learning and to motivation. As an anthropologist, I believe novelty is essential to the human story and it’s a very powerful stimulus. Everybody’s probably experienced the feeling when you walk into class on the first day with last year’s lecture notes and nothing else. It doesn’t matter if it was amazing last year. It’s not going to be amazing this year—even if you follow the same notes—because you won’t feel it and they won’t feel it.

At a minimum, you have to change a few things every day. I’ve implemented a 28-day challenge in almost all of my classes. It’s fun and it creates a sense of cohesion. As an experiment, the students have to do something new for 28 days. Among 440 students, a good bunch of them chose a musical instrument. I chose the violin and about seven of us started getting together every week to practice as the 28-Day Band. We premiered in front of the class. Going through a process like that is a wonderful reminder of the difficulty and the awesomeness of learning itself.

Tell us about some teaching and learning ideas or aspects that have recently excited you.

I feel like we’ve mapped out fairly well how teaching and learning work if you take all the literature on teaching and learning as a whole. You have to deal with motivation factors, like balancing the extrinsic with the intrinsic. You have to think about how the brain learns and make sure that your material is in line with how the brain learns.

One other thing I have been considering is the importance of identity and how students really learn incredibly fast and incredibly deeply when they start to identify with the person they’re going to become after they’ve learned it—not with the stuff they’re learning. Let’s say, in simple terms, that the students in my class start to identify as anthropologists. They will learn all the techniques of anthropology in a much deeper way than if they were identifying as “somebody who’s just coasting through college.” So that shift in identity is really essential. I think it could go a long way to help students identify, minimally, as someone who’s trying to grow themselves and be the best self they can be—not someone who’s just trying to get a grade. And that goes a long way in shifting them toward deep learning.

Dr. Wesch currently serves as an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University. He is featured in the following modules in ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices:

• Preparing an Effective Syllabus
• Embracing Diversity in Your Classroom
• Developing Fair, Consistent, and Transparent Grading Practices

This week in higher ed news, MBA programs explore new ways to amp up their lessons to increase student engagement, and students get the chance to design courses at UC Berkeley.

Bulking up. Planning lessons in advance makes backwards course design easier, saves time and stress, and allows instructors to collaborate, Anne Guarnera says. (GradHacker)

Digital dialogues. Posing questions and prompts on social media may increase student engagement and initiate opportunities for dialogue about digital issues. (Student Affairs and Technology)

Connected classrooms. Some MBA programs are using blended learning, including an application that alerts lecturers when a student appears bored, to increase student interaction and engagement. (The Wall Street Journal – Paywall)

Telling tales well. A mathematics professor argues that STEM majors need to learn humanities skills in order to communicate their ideas effectively. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Peer-led pedagogy. A UC Berkeley program offers students the opportunity to design courses with faculty sponsorship, resulting in classes covering topics like political strategy in Game of Thrones and the secrets of Rubik’s Cubes. (Los Angeles Times)

Higher ed hopes. Shira Laurie suggests five strategies to help instructors set achievable goals and manage their expectations for their courses. (GradHacker)

Cutting costs. Cost savings from hiring adjunct instructors over tenure-track faculty tend to fund administrative and other non-instructional areas, two studies find. (Inside Higher Ed)

Learning teaching. Being an expert in a discipline doesn’t necessarily translate into knowing how to teach it well, and instructors should make an effort to learn how to teach their subjects effectively, Terry McGlynn says. (Small Pond Science)

Fair grades. Making grading criteria transparent in the course syllabus and offering a forum for students to discuss complaints appropriately are some of the ways instructors can mitigate potential grading disputes. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Envisioning edtech. The best educational technology should inspire creativity and support educators rather than replace them, Tony Wheeler suggests. (Information Age)

Spreading stories. One professor developed a learning tool to raise awareness about fake news and help people visualize how it spreads. (ProfHacker)

Lifelong learning. A study finds that building relationships with faculty in and outside of the classroom can help liberal arts college students achieve fulfillment in their careers and personal lives. (Inside Higher Ed)

Tabling traditional teaching.Lectures don’t improve students’ problem-solving skills, a University of British Columbia study concluded, suggesting that instructors should turn to more interactive teaching methods. (eCampus News)

This week, join a professor as she leverages reflections from the fall semester to close out 2016. Plus, higher education leaders say their top priority this year is to improve student success.

Course reflection. Bonni Stachowiak describes teaching experiments she conducted last semester, including increasing the frequency of exams to lower the stakes of each one, and how she is using student evaluations to hone her lessons. (Teaching in Higher Ed)

ACE leadership. Molly Broad, who spearheaded the ACE-ACUE collaboration to improve teaching nationwide, plans to step down as American Council on Education president in October. (ACE)

Transfer trajectories. The University of California has developed “transfer pathways”—clearly defined course expectations for given majors—to make community college students competitive candidates for admission. (The Chronicle of Higher Education – Paywall)

Learning sans laptops. One professor explains why he bans laptops in his classroom and points to research that supports his claim that students learn better without them. (The New York Times)

Technology trends. From tools for showing high-quality videos to insights for managing blog subscriptions, here are technologies to improve your lessons in 2017. (Student Affairs and Technology)

Spotlighting student success.Higher education leaders see student success as a top priority in 2017 and beyond, according to a new survey. (University Business)

Diversity developments. Over the past 50 years, diversity among higher education students has increased; in fact, today’s freshmen are more diverse than the nation as a whole. (The Chronicle of Higher Education – Paywall)

Lessons in leading. To transform students into society’s leaders, institutions must instill resilience and compassion and teach transferable skills, Davidson College President Carol Quillen writes. (The Washington Post)

College comebacks. Several states are offering grants and other financial incentives to encourage students who dropped out of college to reenroll. (The Wall Street Journal– Paywall)

Defending differences. In today’s politically charged environment, educators must expose students to diverse opinions and teach them to challenge their original biases, Michelle Mielly writes. (The Conversation)

Gene education. Students received DNA testing as part of a West Chester University campus-wide project, providing learning experiences that gave students greater insight into their backgrounds and sometimes challenged their views. (The Washington Post)

This week, 12 months of articles featured in the The ‘Q’ Newsletter’s “News in brief” section. Plus, don’t miss other top articles and interviews from the ACUE Community.

January: One way for instructors to reduce nerves before the first day of class is to be overly prepared, Linda Nilson tells the ACUE Community. (The ‘Q’ Blog)

February: Two multiyear studies found that high-quality instructional training for faculty positively affected student learning. (Inside Higher Ed)

March: The American Council on Education (ACE) and ACUE announced a landmark collaboration to dramatically improve student outcomes through effective college instruction. (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)

April: Lead by Miami Dade College and Florida A&M University, Florida institutions increasingly see effective instruction as key to boosting student success. (Politico Florida)

May: Changes to the student population and faculty workforce underscore why effective college instruction is necessary, U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell said in a discussion with ACUE’s Board of Advisors. (The ‘Q’ Blog)

June: Experts and faculty from ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices outline research-based classroom strategies to help underprepared students. (The ‘Q’ Blog)

July: Exceptional faculty are key to student success, especially for incoming freshmen, write Sue Henderson, president of New Jersey City University, and James Muyskens, former president of Queens College. (University Business)

August: American Council on Education President Molly Broad writes that teaching and learning centers are “vital” to student success. (The Huffington Post)

September: Kevin Reilly, founding member of ACUE’s Board of Advisors, urges college and university boards to focus on how effective teaching can improve student outcomes. (Trusteeship Magazine)

October: The University of Nevada, Reno launched ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices as part of the institution’s commitment to student achievement and diversity. (University Business)

November: Faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi get a rare learning opportunity through ACUE’s Course. (Hattiesburg American)

December: Mary-Ann Winkelmes shares three key guidelines for educators looking to refine their teaching. (ACUE Expert Series)

This week, a blog post about the need to engage faculty to address the challenges facing higher education. A model with widespread support is to “unbundle” traditional academic roles so that faculty can focus on teaching.

A new wiki that allows students to fact-check stories they read on social media could be a valuable tool for teaching digital literacy. (ProfHacker)

Emily Sherer Stewart offers tips for teaching composition effectively, including keeping students writing frequently. (Vitae)

A free online tool for building and publishing visual novels can serve as a platform for student projects in multiple disciplines. (ProfHacker)

Unbundling traditional academic roles so faculty can concentrate on teaching is one promising workforce model with widespread support among professors, administrators, and policymakers. (Higher Education Today)

Two California State technology professionals advocate “untethering,” a process by which faculty can remotely access resources for developing digital literacy skills to enhance their teaching. (EdSurge)

Scott Hamm provides five tips for incorporating mobile apps into instruction, such as using texting for exam review. (Campus Technology)

Mentoring relationships between doctoral students and two-year college faculty can bring to light challenges like working with diverse student groups and provide opportunities to reflect on teaching. (Inside Higher Ed)

A college degree is central to economic success, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen told University of Baltimore graduates—who are entering the strongest workforce in nearly a decade—in her commencement address. (The New York Times)

Barbara Fister suggests three open-access databases on which students and instructors can share, find, and collaborate on humanities projects. (Library Babel Fish)

Michael Bloomberg’s foundation launched an initiative encouraging colleges to substantially increase student enrollment from working-class families. (The New York Times)

Stanford University’s Tina Seelig suggests that teaching is not just about the information; instructors must build relationships with students. (Medium)

Like all creative projects, drafting and revision are essential to designing a course and planning a lesson, writes David Gooblar. (Pedagogy Unbound)

Supporting inclusivity is not enough. Instructors must also incorporate their students’ diversity and backgrounds into their teaching practices, writes Catriona Ellis. (Teaching Matters blog)

Bonni Stachowiak and Saundra McGuire, a subject matter expert on ACUE’s Course in Effective Teaching Practices, talk about teaching students how to learn on the latest episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. (Teaching in Higher Ed)