Book

The New College Classroom

2022 Cathy N. Davidson Education

About the Book

College instruction is stuck in the past. If a time traveler from a century ago arrived on today’s campuses, they would recognize only too well the listlessness of the lecture hall and the awkward silence of the seminar room. Yet we know how to do better. Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis, two of the world’s foremost innovators in higher education, turn to the latest research and methods to show how teachers at every kind of institution can help students become independent, creative, and active learners.

The New College Classroom helps instructors in all disciplines create an environment that is truly conducive to learning. Davidson and Katopodis translate cutting-edge research in learning science and pedagogy into ready-to-use strategies to incorporate into any course. These empirically driven, classroom-tested techniques of active learning—from the participatory syllabus and ungrading to grab-and-go activities for every day of the term—have achieved impressive results at community colleges and research universities, on campus, online, and in hybrid settings.

Extensive evidence shows that active-learning tools are more effective than conventional methods of instruction. Davidson and Katopodis explain how and why their approach works and provide detailed case studies of educators successfully applying active-learning techniques in their courses every day, ensuring that their students are better prepared for the world after college.

Notes

What the latest science of learning tells us about inspiring, effective, and inclusive teaching at the college level.

College instruction is stuck in the past. If a time traveler from a century ago arrived on today’s campuses, they would recognize only too well the listlessness of the lecture hall and the awkward silence of the seminar room. Yet we know how to do better. Cathy N. Davidson and Christina Katopodis, two of the world’s foremost innovators in higher education, turn to the latest research and methods to show how teachers at every kind of institution can help students become independent, creative, and active learners.

The New College Classroom helps instructors in all disciplines create an environment that is truly conducive to learning. Davidson and Katopodis translate cutting-edge research in learning science and pedagogy into ready-to-use strategies to incorporate into any course. These empirically driven, classroom-tested techniques of active learning—from the participatory syllabus and ungrading to grab-and-go activities for every day of the term—have achieved impressive results at community colleges and research universities, on campus, online, and in hybrid settings.

Extensive evidence shows that active-learning tools are more effective than conventional methods of instruction. Davidson and Katopodis explain how and why their approach works and provide detailed case studies of educators successfully applying active-learning techniques in their courses every day, ensuring that their students are better prepared for the world after college.

Reviews

3 reviews

In a book that is both inspirational and deeply practical, Davidson and Katopodis offer classroom instructors all the tools they need to transform traditional classrooms into learning environments that engage and empower twenty-first-century students. Grounded in cognitive science and classroom-tested examples from across the globe, The New College Classroom belongs in the hands of any educator—regardless of academic discipline—truly interested in changing students’ lives with effective teaching.

Beverly Daniel Tatum Author of: Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

As the authors compellingly argue, lectures and exams are 19th-century relics, hangovers from a bygone industrial era in which education was used to turn farmers into white-collar workers. […]. That’s why Davidson and Katopodis put students at the center of their “new” classroom. They advocate for activities like coauthoring a class constitution, assigning collaborative projects, incorporating peer review, and using contract grading—all of which place students at the helm of their own learning.

Danica Savonick Public Books
 
Not another “how-to” book, The New College Classroom has a larger objective: to provide striking examples about how innovative junior scholars are designing courses to be more inclusive, interactive and radically democratic. The book’s goal is twofold: to draw upon cognitive neuroscience, management coaching and conflict negotiation theory to explain how instructors can bring all students, not just extroverts or those with steel-trap memories, to success, and how to reduce the time that instructors and students spend on unproductive tasks in order to reduce the burden of high teaching loads.
Steven Mintz Inside Higher Ed