Changing College Classrooms: New Teaching and Learning Strategies for an Increasingly Complex World

This is a lengthy book (351 pages) full of excellent reading, particularly for one who may be thinking about launching a career in higher education. The subtitle of the book, "New teaching and Learning Strategies for an Increasingly Complex World" leads the reader into a well prepared edition of numerous articles exploring the theme that it is permissible to "care about " teaching. Perhaps the only draw back about the book (if you consider it a draw back) is that the diversity of the contributors is regional. Most of the contributors to the edition are either teaching, researching or have graduated from higher education institutions in the West coast (California). Some may view the contributions as a Californization of higher education thinking.The edition is organized into four sections. Part one, is structured with articles that fit into the theme "Instructional Strategies that Promote Active Leaning". Part two concentrates on "Developing Multicultural Understanding" in the classroom. The focus of part three promotes "Teaching with and about New Technologies". Lastly, part four concludes with "Assessing Teaching Effectiveness and Learning Outcomes. Each section is plethoric and leaves the readers many areas to think about on the art of teaching.Although I found most of the chapters in the book valuable, there were a few chapters that were slow and basic. However, this did not deter me from making a final decision to purchase a copy of the book to add to my personal library. One less than enthusiastic chapter, "Using the Internet for teaching, learning and research" seemed to be very basic and complex at the same time. Many of us already know about E-mail, but anonymous file transfer protocols, I think this is something of different story. Part two of the edition, "Developing Multicultural Understanding" was my favorite part of the book. In this part I read Unmasking the Myths of Racism by G. Auletta and T. Jones. They concluded some disturbing themes. According to both of these Ph. D. authors, "racism is real and alive in the United States, and it is flourishing on our college campuses" and added that "we cannot afford the luxury of sitting in our ivory towers ignoring or refusing to discuss issues of racism while the towers' bases are being threatened by racial fires". In their final comments they "strongly encourage that those responsible for higher education provide leadership in charting a course for more intelligently discussing and working on issues of racism". Part two also included a very helpful chapter that helped me to provide comments on the diversity issue presented in a course I took in the summer of 1999. Strategies for Teaching in a Multicultural Environment by E. Barkan left me thinking about my high school days and early community colleges days. The history that I was exposed to a student then was one sided and void. Barkan, in my opinion is profound and is absolutely correct in sayin