From The Library Assessment, Collaborative Learning, Discussion Leadership

Banta, Trudy. Making A Difference: Outcomes of a Decade of Assessment in Higher Education. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publisher, 1993. 

More than 90 percent of U.S. colleges and universities currently conduct or plan to conduct assessment activities. While assessment practices have been described in numerous books and journals, no one has yet attempted to report systematically on the outcomes of this decade of assessment activity. Are faculty teaching more effectively? The ultimate question has remained: Is assessment really making a difference?

Based on a survey of assessment coordinators at 115 institutions widely known for their work in outcomes assessment, this book presents a comprehensive account of both the best practices and the important, and sometimes difficult, lessons learned in outcomes assessment. The book brings together detailed first person accounts by some of the most successful practitioners in the field to show how assessment findings have been used to improve programs, student services, and student learning.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.

Knowledge has traditionally been understood as cognitive--we gain it by examining the world and taking in the facts. Kenneth Bruffee, Broeklundian Professor of English and director of the Scholars Program at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, offers a different model. His model tries to account for new ways of thinking about how we learn and do research. He proposes that Knowledge is "constructed through negotiation with others" in communities of knowledgeable peers.

Bruffee begins by discussing the place of collaborative learning in higher education, explaining what it is, how it works, and why. He then examines the implications of the "kuhnian" understanding of knowledge on which his model of collaborative learning is based, explaining how "nonfoundational social constructionist thought" changes our understanding of education in general.

Bruffee argues that changing college and university education depends first on changing how teachers think about knowledge, teaching, and learning. He describes the practical value of the activities encouraged by a collaborative approach--students working in consensus groups and research teams, tutoring peers, and helping each other with editing and revision. He conclues that this organized practice in working together on intellectual tasks is the best possible preparation for the real work, as students look beyond the authority of teachers, practice the craft of interdependence, and construct knowledge in the very way that academic disciplines and the professions do.

Christensen, C. Roland, Ann Sweet, and David A. Garvin, eds. Education for Judgment: The Artistry of Discussion Leadership. Boston: Harvard Business School Press 1991. 

The use of discussion in teaching has the ability to stimulate learning. Through a skillful orchestration of questioning, listening, and response, it helps students to master course material and critical judgment skills in tandem. Education for Judgment gives practical advice on how to negotiate a "contract" for the conduct of the group, how to lead a discussion without stalling it, getting students to talk to each other, building participants to adopt new and thoughtful roles, the ethics involves in choosing material, how to encourage independent thinking, structuring technical material, how to evaluate student participation, and creating a sense of closure and accomplishment.

Kenneth R. Bain and  Alaina Bookstein