Voices of Experience: Reflections from a Harvard Teaching Seminar(5 Higher Ed)

The authors of Voices of Experience are members of a rapidly growing population of academics who focus their efforts as seriously on teaching as they do on scholarship. Their essays grew out of a seminar at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, which was devoted to topics that teachers early in their academic careers wanted to explore with their colleagues: effective teaching techniques, students' and teachers' motivation, discussion in the classroom, collaborative learning, lecturing, diversity, grading and feedback, and balancing teaching and professional concerns. Voices of Experience offers the reader an opportunity to share the results of this interdisciplinary exchange.

About the Author :
The Editors: Mary-Ann Winkelmes is Associate Director at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University and teaches the history of Italian Renaissance art and architecture at Harvard University Extension School. She received her Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University and her M.A. in the history of art from Yale University. She has published on Benedictine church design and decoration, acoustics and religious architecture, nuns as patrons of art and architecture in Renaissance Italy, and college teaching. James Wilkinson is Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in European history from Harvard University and has published widely on both pedagogy and European intellectual history in professional journals. In addition, he is author of The Intellectual Resistance in Europe and co-author of Contemporary Europe: A History.

Review :
We usually assume that great wisdom requires long years of experience, but this book demonstrates that wisdom and creativity can go hand in hand in relatively new university teachers. All of us - experienced and inexperienced - will find, as I did, that this book contributes many useful insights about teaching. (Wilbert J. McKeachie, Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, Department of Psychology, and Research Scientist Emeritus, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan) Those of us who wondered how quickly the scholarship of teaching would be embraced and what kind of impact it could have need only read the thoughtful, beautifully written, and intellectually engaging essays of 'Voices of Experience' to realize that a new generation of university teachers is already here and changing our campuses. (Michele Marincovich, Assistant Vice Provost and Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford University and co-editor of 'Disciplinary Difference in Teaching and Learning' and 'The Professional Development of Graduate Teaching Assistants') This collection should encourage readers to do what the authors have done: think deeply about learning issues while exploring major ideas and findings from the research and theoretical literature on teaching and learning. (Ken Bain, Director, Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, Northwestern University)