The "No Guilt" Book Club

Do you have a stack of professional reading that you can't seem to make it through alone?

Do you hear books, reports, or journal articles mentioned at meetings and wish there was time for discussion about them?

Do you feel like you are "out-of-the-loop" with professional development opportunities?

Have you shied away from book clubs because you just don't have time to read and prepare?

Answer yes to any of these questions, and this "book club" is for you.

Why is it “no guilt”?

Each meeting has facilitators who are familiar with the month’s reading and will lead lively discussions on the topics. 

Why join the club?

Once a month you will have an opportunity to engage in great conversations with other members of the BGSU community about current topics affecting the University and its mission.

Plan to join the club in the Fall Semester 2008! Meeting times and locations will be announced on the BGSU Campus Update and on this website.

Below you will find links and descriptions for the club readings from 2007-2008.

October 2007

The first selection for discussion is the Spring 2007 issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learning, Self-Authorship: Advancing Students' Intellectual Growth by Marcia B. Baxter Magolda.  This article can be accessed at:

http://journals.ohiolink.edu/ejc/article.cgi?issn=02710633&issue=v2007i0109&article=69_stffte

Here is an excerpt from that article:

Many students enter college having learned how to follow formulas for success, lacking exposure to diverse perspectives, and unclear about their own beliefs, identities, and values (Baxter Magolda, 2001b). Moving from these entering characteristics to intended learning outcomes requires transformational learning, or "how we learn to negotiate and act on our own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings rather than those we have uncritically assimilated from others" (Mezirow, 2000, p. 8). Extracting themselves from what they have uncritically assimilated from authorities to define their own purposes, values, feelings, and meanings involves far more than information and skill acquisition. It requires a transformation of their views of knowledge, their identity, and their relations with others. Twenty-first-century learning outcomes require self-authorship: the internal capacity to define one's belief system, identity, and relationships (Baxter Magolda, 2001b; Kegan, 1994).

November 2007

“Liberal arts student learning outcomes: An integrated approach” by Patricia King, Marie Kendall Brown, Nathan Lindsay, and JoNes Vanhecke

About Campus, Volume 12, issue 4 (September/October 2007)

http://0-journals.ohiolink.edu.maurice.bgsu.edu/ejc/issue.cgi?issn=10864822&issue=v12i0004

“To carry out such visions of liberal education, colleges and universities are seeking to prepare students with skills that are not context-specific or bound by the limitations of our current understanding of known problems but that instead are applicable to new and changing contexts, expanding knowledge bases, and emerging issues.”

“How Am I Doing?” by Paula Wasley

Chronicle of Higher Education, October 26, 2007

http://0-chronicle.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/weekly/v54/i09/09a01001.htm

“Students at Brigham Young U. get paid to give professors the straight dope on what works—and what doesn't—in the classroom.”

January 2008

What if the Faculty Really Do Assume Responsibility for the Educational Program? by Jerry G. Gaff in AAC&U's journal, Liberal Education.

"The recommendations offered [in the article] can give faculty even greater control of the instructional program through mutual and collaborative relations with other authorities."

The article can be found by clicking on the link below and downloading the PDF full text version listed under "What if the Faculty Really Do Assume Responsibility for the Educational Program."

http://0-web.ebscohost.com.maurice.bgsu.edu/ehost/results?vid=3
&hid=115&sid=15b7a3e2-7530-41c2-93e1-383d7cd26202%40sessionmgr103

February 2008

Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown

Interested?  Read this quote from the introduction—

"It is unlikely that sufficient resources will be available to build enough new campuses to meet the growing global demand for higher education-at least not the sort of campuses that we have traditionally built for colleges and universities. Nor is it likely that the current methods of teaching and learning will suffice to prepare students for the lives that they will lead in the twenty-first century.

You can access this article by clicking here: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/EDUCAUSE+Review/
MindsonFireOpenEducationt/45823?time=1202667407

March 2008

This month's discussion article is “Applying the Science of Learning to the University and Beyond” by Diane F. Halpern and BGSU’s own Milton D. Hakel.  Change; Jul/Aug2003, 35(4), p. 36-42.

This article can be located by logging onto the University Libraries'

home page and clicking on the EBSCO link on the left-hand side. Simply

enter the title of the article in the search area and enjoy the reading.

Interested?  Read this quote from the article--

“The empirically validated principles that we offer in this article are based on discussions at that meeting, embellished by our own personal biases and memories. They can be applied in any adult learning situation, including distance education with online components, learning from texts, laboratory and classroom instruction, and learning in informal settings.”