Learning That Matters

“Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education is a must-have text for new faculty and experienced faculty alike. From the personal stories from the authors’ own experiences to the connection to educational research, this text should be on the desk of all faculty in higher education.” (Full review available at Teachers College Record, August 2022.)

Excerpt of Teachers College Record--August 2022 review by Jennifer R. Meadows, Ph.D., Associate Professor in Curriculum and Instruction, Tennessee Tech University

“Bold and empowering! A compelling guide on learning-centered teaching that demands a shift from status-quo…from deep-seated, colonized practices that have long infected the professoriate and crippled success by generations of students. If you seek powerful forms of inquiry through capacious issues that matter, this book is for you. If you desire evidence-based strategies to bring coherence to each student’s learning, this guide is crucial to that goal. If you seek insight into a liberated academy…rooted in democracy and equity to activate meaning-making by all students, this guide is a fresh glimpse into provocative possibilities for higher education.”

Rosalie A. Richards, Ph.D., Associate Provost for Faculty Development, Stetson University

“Designing and facilitating learning experiences is an essential part of the work of faculty throughout higher education. In Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education, readers are gifted with abundant opportunities to reflect on our teaching and ample guidance for taking action on what we discover through the process. Designed to be used either as a group or by an individual, this resource charts a path for taking sound educational theory and turning it into practice in our pedagogy. The authors have embedded equity and social justice throughout each page of this important book. They have given us ways to be more intentional in aligning our instructional design with our values.”

Bonni Stachowiak, Dean of Teaching and Learning at Vanguard University, Host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

“Recent events have thrown into sharp relief the inequities that exist in education. We, who care about our students’ learning, may not be able to wait for those in leadership positions to make critically-needed changes to higher education. But educators can start where the learning happens and let necessary changes rise from there. This book can help you walk that path and be that change. This book gathers key topics and takes an accessible, practical approach to implementing impactful, meaningful change in your teaching. You can apply the concepts and exercises to a whole course design or re-design or focus on a module. You can approach this book by reading it from the beginning to the end, or you can jump to specific sections when those principles apply to the acute challenges you are facing. This book is applicable to educators of all levels and all disciplines and at all stages of their careers—as long as they share the goal of improving teaching and learning. You will feel inspired, invigorated, and motivated, and you will feel empowered to make an impact.”

Melinda Maris, Ph.D., Assistant Dean, Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences, National Institutes of Health

“The succinct and compelling chapters of Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education provide a taxonomy of the well-designed learning experience for students. Readers may benefit from a sequential reading of chapters or simply dip into the guide at any place for conversation starters, tips, and evidence-based strategies. These authors presented at the annual institute that my teaching center organized at Emory’s Oxford College, and I have followed them most recently in a new position at the University System of Georgia, the Board of Regents. Strong thanks to them for furthering the noble and aspirational work, aligned with the social justice work at Emory, which ultimately translates to one fundamental idea: all means all. Our goal is to successfully deepen the learning of all the students in our courses. This book makes that goal achievable.”

Jeffery Galle, Ph.D., Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, University System of Georgia, Board of Regents

“Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education is an important toolbox for all of us in higher education who strive to help students engage in deep and meaningful learning. This practical guide is chocked full of useful content, supplemented by author experiences. It also includes suggestions for activities as well as reflections on teaching and learning. It’s a great resource for aspiring, new, and seasoned college and university faculty.”

Claire Major, Professor of Higher Education, The University of Alabama

Acknowledgments

Foreword

1. Teaching Matters

2. From the Foundation Up

3. Design Matters

4. Portable Outcomes

5. The Dilemma, Issue, or Question Approach

6. Connected Assessment

7. The Power of Projects

8. Strategies That Matter

9. Supporting Students

10. Your Turn: Self- and Collective Efficacy

About the Authors

Index

Caralyn Zehnder

Caralyn Zehnder is a lecturer in Biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She discovered her passion for transformative teaching and developed her identity as a professional educator when she was a professor of Biology & Environmental Science at Georgia College. It was at Georgia College where she realized the power and joy of collaborating with fellow educators to intentionally design courses. Dr. Zehnder facilitates course design workshops that help participants use evidence-based teaching practice that utilize the most recent research in education, cognitive psychology, and the social sciences to build learning environments that contribute to important student learning. She earned her B.S. in Biology from Penn State and her Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of Georgia. For 2 years, she was the Professional Development Coordinator at Springfield Technical Community College. On a good weekend, you’ll find Caralyn out hiking and birding with her husband and daughter.

Cynthia Alby

Cynthia Alby has spent most of her career immersed in what could most accurately be described as “avid cross-discipline idea synthesizing.” She studies pedagogy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, and economics - anything that might yield useful clues to improving the art and science of teaching. Her primary research question is, “How might we re-enchant learning for both students and faculty?” Dr. Alby received a Ph.D. in Language Education from the University of Georgia, an M.A. in Classical Archeology from the University of Cincinnati, and an H.A.B. in Classical Languages and Philosophy from Xavier University. She joined Georgia College in 2001, where she is now a Professor of Teacher Education and works extensively with the Center for Teaching and Learning. She is also the Lead Lecturer for Georgia’s “Governor’s Teaching Fellows,” a program she has worked with since 2001. She and her husband raise a critically endangered breed of sheep on their farm, Shangri-Baa.

Karynne Kleine

Searching for a purposeful profession after stints in both public and private business sectors, Karynne L M Kleine came later to her career in education, which has now fascinated her for 35 years. Throughout that period, she has examined many of the taken-for-granted-assumptions about teaching, learning, and how the world works in order to internalize her understanding of human nature and its intersection with growth and progress of the collective. Dr. Kleine’s educational philosophy focuses on finding out “what is” then imagining and realizing “what could be.” She calls Georgia home having travelled the US and earning undergraduate degrees in Interdisciplinary Studies (Southwestern College) and Business Administration (San Diego State University), and advanced degrees in Education from the University of Maine (M.Ed. Middle Grades Education; Ed. D. History and Philosophy of Science/Science Education.) As a former dean and current professor of education, Karynne collaborates alongside her colleagues at Georgia College as well as nationally with those in other fields to address issues of equity, particularly inequitable educational outcomes that serve to reinforce the status quo and limit life choices. She and the love of her life, Mike Gleason, together enjoy the pace of time and quietude found in the mountains of Appalachia.

Julia Metzker

Julia Metzker serves as Director of the Washington Center for Improving Undergraduate Education at The Evergreen State College. Julia received her first degree from The Evergreen State College where she learned first-hand the value of a transformative liberal arts education. She obtained a doctoral degree in inorganic chemistry from the University of Arizona and completed a postdoctoral appointment at the University of York in the United Kingdom. In her 10 years as a chemistry professor at Georgia College, she discovered the power of community-based learning to engage students in learning that matters. After serving as the inaugural Director of Community-based Engaged Learning at Georgia College she moved to Stetson University as the founding Executive Director for the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence. During her journey of discovering herself as an educator, she was fortunate to find a cohort of like-minded university educators who co-founded the Innovative Course-building Group (IC-bG) - a grass-roots social network for learning that supports teaching faculty and staff across disciplines. She believes in reimagining and reclaiming the democratic potential of assessment, work she champions as a member of the Imagining America's “Assessing the Practices of Public Scholarship” research group. She and her partner, Joe, raise chickens and bees with the help of an unruly Australian Shepherd in the Pacific Northwest.