Summer 2024 SoTL Reading List

At the beginning of every summer, I try to recommend SoTL books in case any of you have a bit more time during the summer to read more in depth about teaching strategies. So, for this summer of 2024, here are a few books worth considering:

1. Teaching as if Learning Matters: Pedagogies of Becoming by Next-Generation Faculty (Robinson, O’Loughlin, Kearns, & Plummer, 2022) - This book is great for graduate students learning to teach or for those mentoring graduate student instructors. 

2. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor (Barry, 2020) - In this graphic record keeping experience, Professor Barry guides readers through an iteration of her syllabi.

3. High Impact Practices (HIPs) in Online Education: Research and Best Practices – Linder & Hayes (2018) - Addressing HIPs such as service learning, intensive writing assignments, or undergraduate research transition to an online space.

4. Embracing Chatbots in Higher Education by Alexander Sidorkin (2024) explores the integration of AI-powered chatbots such as ChatGPT into higher education for instructional and communication purposes.

5. Generative AI in Higher Education: The ChatGPT Effect by Cecilia Ka Yuk Chan (2024) -  one of the first to provide a comprehensive examination of the use and impact of GenAI in higher ed.

6. “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” Resistance to Change in Higher Ed by Brian Rosenberg - President Emeritus of Macalester College (2024). An invigorating work that identifies obstructions to transformative change in higher education and offers paths to break through. Draws on decades of higher ed to expose the entrenched structures, practices, and cultures that inhibit meaningful postsecondary reform, even as institutions face serious challenges to their financial and educational models. 

7. The Real World of College: What Higher Education Is and What It Can Be by Wendy Fischman (2024). Why higher ed has lost its way, and how universities can focus sharply on their core mission. Analyzes in-depth interviews with 2,000 students, alumni, faculty, administrators, parents, trustees, which were conducted at ten institutions ranging from highly selective liberal arts colleges to less-selective state schools.

8. The New College Classroom by Davidson and Katopodis (2022). What the latest science of learning tells us about inspiring, effective, and inclusive teaching at the college level.

9. The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood by Susan Engel (2018). Testing misses what really matters about learning: the desire to learn in the first place. Curiosity is vital, but it remains a surprisingly understudied characteristic. This book is a deeply researched, exploration of what curiosity is, how it can be measured, how it develops and how it can be fostered.

10. Recentering Learning: Complexity, Resilience, and Adaptability in Higher Ed by Maggie Debelius, Joshua Kim, and Edward Maloney (2024). scholars and practitioners assess the impacts of the pandemic, as well as to anticipate the effects of climate change, social unrest, artificial intelligence, financial challenges, and changing demographics.

I plan to start sharing weekly SoTL research articles again in mid-August 2024. Enjoy your summer whether it be a well-deserved rest and/or productive research projects.