Motivating and Rewarding University Teachers to Improve Student Learning- A Guide for Faculty and Administrators

Broad coverage, based on research and experience, nitty-gritty details, checklists of actions to take, many examples, practical forms, building trust—this book offers so much to help you in your career.
Many excellent books have been written for administrators about motivating faculty. Some books have been written about being an academic. Books have been written about the reward system. Others have been written on improving student learning. Boyer has written about the scholarship of teaching. Some books have been written on measuring effective teaching. Some books are written only for administrators; others, only for individual faculty. None have been written so as to integrate all of these and address them as a whole. This book does. Both faculty and administrators will benefit from this book.
One overall theme of this book is that we can and should improve student learning. Many articles and books have been written that are chock full of interesting, effective ways to improve students learning. But numerous surveys show that the way to get teachers to change what they do in the classroom is not more ideas—it is the reward system, the culture and inadequate assessment that usually offers no support and little incentive for dedicated teachers to work hard to improve student learning. The rewards tend to be for research in the subject domain. Concerning the assessment process, many of the published policies I have seen lack measurable criteria and a description of the expected forms of evidence. In other words, the five principles of assessment rarely seem to be applied to Mission and Vision statements, P&T policies and annual performance reviews. Guidelines and examples are given on how to do this well.
A second theme is that all faculty should do research. Some prefer to do research-in-teaching but, to date, this effort still lacks credibility. In the past, for example, the credibility for research-in-teaching has been damaged because some diddle around, try one thing or another, publish this and claim it to be scholarship. In this book we explore the issue of what is research-in-teaching, why it is important, how excellence in teaching differs from excellence in research-in-teaching and offer suggestions (and remedies) as to why research-in-teaching fails to be recognized and rewarded: Section 5.7 with remedies in Chapters 11 and 12.
The culture or the system in which each of us works is critical to our success. We offer a definition of "culture,"suggest how one might probe the institution to uncover the real culture and offer suggestions to administrators about how to create a culture to nurture student learning.
This book is structured around four basics:
• the five principles of assessment
• a seven-step process for intrinsic motivation
• fundamentals of how to improve student learning
• Kreber's research identifying the processes used by academics not the products.
This book is based on the five fundamental principles of assessment. Motivation comes from self-assessment and reflection. Rewards, merit, tenure and promotion come from peer assessment of our performance based on evidence related to criteria. Most of the angst I have observed in the university context occurs because academics and administrators do not understand and apply the fundamental principles of assessment.
Intrinsic motivation is powerful. A seven-step process, based on the classic book Motivational Interviewing, is used as a model. Details are given as to how to use this model for individuals to improve student learning (Chapter 8) and for chairs to motivate individuals (Chapter 9) and for administrators to eliminate under-performance (Chapter 14).