Putting It All Together

A fantastic resource for ALL who support the student learning experience. We know that how we engage students is foundational to their learning. In this book Dr Galle, working with over 30 authors, masterfully leads us through evidence-based practices and a faculty learning community program that demonstrate massive innovation across courses, programs and the curriculum. A book to return to time and time again for inspiration and ideas. By offering thick descriptions of teaching and learning strategies in multiple contexts, Putting it all Together does a great service to the profession. Faculty can find here inspiring models to evolve and improve their practice, while administrators can learn how to support and reward the faculty who are doing this important work. Every reader, no matter their discipline or institutional context, will find useful guidance here. I can say that being part of the Chancellors Learning Scholars really motivated me to explore these concepts to improve my teaching. One of the pedagogies I decided to implement in my online courses was Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT). TILT benefits student learning by increasing academic confidence. The TILT framework focuses on making the how and why of learning transparent, which helps students understand the purpose of the assignments and how to succeed. A TILTed assignment makes the connections to what knowledge and skills the student will learn as well as the application to their chosen profession. It gives value to the assignment. TILT aims to advance equitable teaching and learning practices that reduce systemic barriers to student success. By using TILT techniques, faculty can help students achieve better learning outcomes. I found it easy to implement and had a significant impact. I have had less questions about the formatting and expectations of the assignments, allowing the student to focus on the content. In the end of course surveys, the students often comment that the course was well organized, that they knew what was expected of them, and they found it easy to navigate. One of the purposes of Putting it all Together is to encourage higher education professionals to focus on student learning as a top priority. It provides a pedagogical roadmap that can guide professionals across disciplines and academic units to achieve success in creating exceptional learning experiences. The book emphasizes that every professional, including faculty, staff, and administrators, must place student learning as their top priority and work within distinct but overlapping areas towards the same purpose. Highlighted is the importance of High Impact Practices and other key pedagogical strategies, along with the use of faculty learning communities to develop academic courses and programs. What's unique about this book is that it not only presents the voices of many experts, but it also offers a path to effecting change. By embedding the important activities and strategies discussed in this book in every facet of the academic community, we can create a more engaged and successful learning environment for students. The approaches outlined by Dr. Galle and contributors in Putting it all Together: How to Create and Scale Exceptional Learning provide a framework for thoughtful, literature supported, and implementation focused innovations. A common criticism of movements toward expanding high-impact practices and other instructional innovations is that it requires so much time and effort from already over-burdened faculty. Sifting through the literature, identifying meaningful innovations, and then incorporating them into teaching practice requires a significant time commitment from even the most dedicated educator. Through his work and in collaboration with the many contributors to this book, Dr. Galle demonstrates ways to scale implementation by lowering the barriers to entry, reinforcing the communal aspects of education, and encouraging low-stakes experimentation. This book provides accessible examples of how instructional innovation can be encouraged and spread through an institution through grass roots activities as well as administrative influence. Virtually everyone who works in higher education is theoretically dedicated to deepening student learning, but the reality of bringing such a lofty goal to fruition on a large scale can be daunting. Putting It All Together: How to Create and Scale Exceptional Learning is perfectly titled because it does just that; it provides what is required to move individuals and institutions from idea to implementation by providing what is most needed to make that leap: concrete examples and attention to the whole spectrum of courses, programs, and entire general education curricula. I highly recommend this opportunity to learn from those who are already doing it. We all know faculty who stand out as gifted teachers, but for many faculty who have had no training in pedagogy, improving their teaching and engaging students is largely a process of trial and error. Putting it all Together: Creating and Scaling Exceptional Learning offers a wealth of examples of research-based techniques that faculty can implement in their classrooms, but perhaps even more importantly it offers a roadmap for amplifying the impact of pedagogical innovation from the single classroom to whole programs, institutions or even systems. As Provost, I am excited by what innovative faculty do in their classrooms, but my passion is making exceptional learning experiences available to all students. This book outlines strategies that administrators at all levels can use to scale these impactful practices.