Recommended Reading List : Book Clubs

In spite of soaring tuition costs, more and more students go to college every year. Almost everyone strives to go, but almost no one asks the fundamental question posed by Academically Adrift: are undergraduates really learning anything once they get there? For a large proportion of students, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's answer to that question is a definitive no. According to their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions, 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills-including critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing-during their first two years of college.

Developing Learner-Centered Teaching offers a step-by-step plan for transforming any course from teacher-centered to the more engaging learner-centered model. Filled with self-assessments and worksheets that are based on each of the five practices identified in Maryellen Weimer's Learner-Centered Teaching, this groundbreaking book gives instructors, faculty developers, and instructional designers a practical and effective resource for putting the learner-centered model into action.

In this provocative and persuasive new book, the author asserts that the secret to high performance and satisfaction-at work, at school, and at home is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world.

This book defines what rubrics are, and how to construct and use them. It provides a complete introduction for anyone starting out to integrate rubrics in their teaching. The authors go on to describe a variety of processes to construct rubrics, including some which involve student participation.They demonstrate how interactive rubrics--a process involving assessors and the assessed in defining the criteria for an assignment or objective--can be effective, not only in involving students more actively in their learning, but in establishing consistent standards of assessment at the program, department and campus level.

These essays, by one of America's leading black intellectuals, face squarely the problems of teachers who do not want to teach, of students who do not want to learn, of racism and sexism in the classroom, and of the gift of freedom that is, for Hooks, the teacher's most important goal.

This volume offers strategies for successful lectures in the academic and business communities. Told from a lecturing mindset, this book aims to combat fear and nervousness, while presenting successful tricks and tactics. In addition, Aarabi provides a unique insight into lecturing for 21st century audiences based on his own lecturing experiences at the University of Toronto and Stanford University.

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her older sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching Cecilia is their housekeeper's son Robbie Turner, a childhood friend who, along with Briony's sister, has recently graduated from Cambridge. By the end of that day the lives of all three will have been changed forever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had never before dared to approach and will have become victims of the younger girl's scheming imagination. And Briony will have committed a dreadful crime, the guilt for which will color her entire life.

Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oaks and shaded squares. Berendt skillfully interweaves a hugely entertaining first-person account of life in this isolated remnant of the Old South with the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark murder case.

Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement.

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home.

A historical romance, The Three Musketeers tells the story of the early adventures of the young Gascon gentleman, D'Artagnan and his three friends from the regiment of the King's Musketeers - Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Under the watchful eye of their patron M. de Treville, the four defend the honour of the regiment against the guards of Cardinal Richelieu, and the honour of the queen against the machinations of the Cardinal himself as the power struggles of seventeenth century France are vividly played out in the background.

Harold Fry is determined to walk six hundred miles from Kingsbridge to the hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed because, he believes, as long as he walks, Queenie Hennessey will live. Still in his yachting shoes and light coat, Harold embarks on his urgent quest across the countryside. Along the way he meets one fascinating character after another, each of whom unlocks his long-dormant spirit and sense of promise.