McKeachie's Teaching Tips: Strategies, Research, and Theory for College and University Teachers (review)

This 11th edition of Teaching Tips continues the practical approach of earlier editions to teaching. The book is supported by research and theory on how students learn and effectively addresses different aspects of organizing and teaching a course. Originally written for beginning teachers and teaching assistants, Teaching Tips's practical approach makes this book useful for everyone, including those who want to refresh their teaching or rethink their pedagogy.

The book is divided into seven sections with twenty-seven different chapters. Wilbert J. McKeachie is the principal author, although eight chapters are written by other collaborators. New to this edition are chapters on distance learning, motivation, laboratory teaching, and teaching thinking. On-ground use of technology tools is also discussed throughout the book.

Part 1 addresses getting started, course preparation, and meeting a class for the first time. In Part 2, McKeachie writes about essentials to teaching such as facilitating discussions, making lectures more effective, assessing, testing and evaluating, and handling cheating. Understanding students is the central theme of Part 3. Topics in this section include motivation in the college classroom, valuing student differences, handling problem students, counseling, advising, and educating. Increasing teachers' repertoire of skills and strategies for facilitating active learning are the themes of Part 4. In this section are chapters on active learning, cooperative and collaborative learning, and problem-based learning.

Other teaching situations such as laboratory instruction, experiential learning, and distance education are discussed in Part 5. In the sixth section, teaching for higher-level goals, such as teaching students how to learn and to think, is discussed. The author also addresses teaching values. Finally, Part 7 discusses the issue of lifelong learning for the teacher.

The chapter on distance education, written by Andrew Northedge of The Open University, is new to this edition. This chapter carefully explains how to construct a course so that it will promote higher-level thinking. The author includes two useful charts on how to structure the course within the assigned time-frame and how to organize teaching and learning activities, beginning with framing the context of the course and developing a teaching narrative that ensures shared meaning.

In "Teaching Thinking," a new chapter in this edition, Jane S. Halomen, Felicia Brown-Anderson, and McKeachie emphasize a teaching pedagogy that requires students to think through active learning. It discusses Bloom's taxonomy plus its revision by Anderson, Krathwohl, and colleagues. Like other chapters of this book, a practical approach suggests useful strategies to enhance thinking skills.

Teaching Tips recognizes that faculty will vary on how they prepare and present their materials. The book respects this individualism but reminds teachers of what students need to learn, how they should be engaged in a discussion, and how to increase their motivation and promote learning. Without being prescriptive, the book provides a road map for creating a learner-centered classroom environment. One of the most important points made throughout the book is the need to listen to students.

Each chapter begins with a specific theme and includes research in support of the best approach. Several strategies, including examples, are provided. Every chapter contains a summary of the main points called "in conclusion." For those who want to continue exploring or learning about a particular topic, each chapter also includes a list of supplementary readings. Chapters are well organized and model the way teachers should go about preparing their classes. Readers are treated in the same way faculty should treat their students. The author repeatedly reminds the reader that "the lecturer's task in university teaching is not to be an abstractor of encyclopedias, but to teach students to learn and think" (p. 55; emphasis his).

Perhaps the only disappointment is that, in order to be useful to all faculty, the book includes few concrete...