International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
Volume 3, Number 1, January 2009

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Book Review

Excerpt

Teaching at Its Best: A Research-Based Resource for College Instructors, 2nd ed.
Linda B. Nilson
(Anker, 2003)

If you are new to the scholarship of teaching and learning and want to get a solid foundation on how to make your courses more effective learning experiences, this book is an excellent choice. Teaching at Its Best is aimed directly at faculty to use for themselves, rather than for faculty developers or administrators. The content is a combination of “how to...” suggestions that will improve general teaching effectiveness as well as “what is...” sections that discuss different learning theories and methods. Active-learning

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Bio

Review by
Jacqueline Bennett
SUNY – Oneonta
Oneonta, New York, USA
bennetjs@oneonta.edu

I received my Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of California, Riverside, where I studied protein chemistry. Since 2006, I have been an assistant professor of chemistry at SUNY College at Oneonta in New York. I teach organic chemistry and am interested in approaches that help my students develop critical thinking skills portable to other disciplines and careers. My interest in SoTL originated from the many standard laboratory experiments that lack any higher order analysis, emphasizing just the mechanical process with little regard to the intellectual process. My research interests involve developing inquiry-based laboratory experiments that improve critical thinking skills as well as designing environmentally friendly synthetic methods for making pharmaceutically significant compounds.
Website: http://web.me.com/jacsb/BLONDES/Welcome.html

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