The book with insight into the best teachers!

I wrote this back in October and saved it as a draft. This book has influenced me so profoundly that I want to share it with you!

What the Best College Teachers Do has given me insight some things I knew and other things I needed to hear again.

A trend in problem solving revolves around finding the BOB’s and WOW’s and determining what things they have in common. The BOB’s are the “Best of the Best” and contrary to what you might thing, the WOW’s stand for the “Worst of the Worst.”

This book provides an excellent analysis of the BOB’s of college education. It comes up with measurable ways to determine the best professors from both a perspective of the best student reviews but also measurable learning and retention that occurred and was seen long after the course’s conclusion. (Correlated with such measures as high MCAT and LSAT scores and not just student reviews.)

The authors also show their results in light of current educational theory. It was released in 2004, but it is new to me! A lot of it ties back to what I’m seeing in my own classroom and with the trend towards using Web 2 in the classroom to create exciting learning environments!

I like this book because it reinforces what good teachers know about using projects and about fair assessments. Interestingly, the best professors have self assessment systems to see how effectively their students learn. Great book!