Invigorate your instruction with these recommended books on teaching and learning from the Drake Institute's Reading List.
Learn about the science of learning, discover evidence-informed strategies for engaging and supporting students both in-person and online, find new approaches to course design, reflect on the efficacy and impact of your teaching and much more.
The ABCs of How We Learn
An explosive growth in research on how people learn has revealed many ways to improve teaching and catalyze learning at all ages. The purpose of this book is to present this new science of learning so that educators can creatively translate the science into exceptional practice. Based on a popular Stanford University course, this book uses a novel format that is suitable as both a textbook and a popular read. With everyday language, engaging examples, a sense of humor, and solid evidence, it describes 26 unique ways that students learn.
Reference:
Schwartz, D.L., J.M. Tang, & K.P. Blair. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn. New York: Norton.
Cheating Lessons: Learning from Academic Dishonesty
James Lang, English professor and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, geared this book to academic faculty as well as administrators who support teaching faculty. His research focuses on academic dishonesty as an inappropriate response to a specific learning environment, rather than a tendency of some individual students.
Lang, J. M. (2013). Cheating lessons : learning from academic dishonesty. Harvard Univ. P. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674726239
Classroom Assessment Techniques: Formative Feedback Tools for College and University Instructors
This revised and expanded third edition provides practical, research-based guidance for using classroom assessment and formative feedback to improve teaching and learning in higher education. It features more than 50 classroom assessment techniques (CATs), with guidance for implementing them in face-to-face, hybrid and online courses. The book also introduces a Course Learning Outcomes Inventory to help instructors identify and prioritize learning outcomes for assessment, along with case studies illustrating assessment in practice.
Angelo, T. A., & Zakrajsek, T. (2024). Classroom assessment techniques : formative feedback tools for college and university teachers (Third edition.). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life
While much scholarship on teaching and learning focuses on how students learn, Parker J. Palmer, renowned author, activist and founder of the Center for College and Renewal, writes The Courage to Teach in order to explore how the character of the teacher, and the inner life of the teacher, are crucial elements in the teaching and learning process. The book builds on a simple premise: good teaching can never be reduced to technique.
Reference:
Palmer, P. J. (2007). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses
L. Dee Fink writes this book in response to two main problems he has observed on college campuses: 1) the majority of learning goals focus on basic memorization, and 2) despite a strong push for active learning in college classrooms, many instructors do not engage students beyond standard lectures and intermittent discussion. This book empowers educators to creatively design courses that will result in significant learning for their students.
Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. Revised and updated. Jossey-Bass.
Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College
The second edition of Effective Grading — the book that has become a classic in the field — provides a proven hands-on guide for evaluating student work and offers an in-depth examination of the link between teaching and grading. Authors Barbara E. Walvoord and Virginia Johnson Anderson explain that grades are not isolated artifacts but part of a process that, when integrated with course objectives, provides rich information about student learning, as well as being a tool for learning itself.
Walvoord, B. E. (2011). Effective Grading: A Tool for Learning and Assessment in College (V. J. Anderson, Ed.; Second edition.). Jossey Bass.
Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
This guide provides prospective SoTL scholars with the necessary background information, foundational theory, tools, resources, and methodology to develop their own SoTL projects, taking the reader through the five stages of the process: generating a research question; designing the study; collecting the data; analyzing the data; and presenting and publishing your SoTL project.
Bishop-Clark, C. (2012). Engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning: A Guide to the Process, and How to Develop a Project from Start to Finish (B. Dietz-Uhler, Ed.; First edition.). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003444497
Engaging Large Classes: Strategies and Techniques for College Faculty
Christine A. Stanley and M. Erin Porter explain that with many universities forming larger classroom sizes, instructors may find themselves teaching classes of between 100-500 students, depending on their institutional size. Their volume aims to provide research-based methods as well as instructor advice about how to effectively teach and promote learning in a large classroom setting.
Stanley, C. A., & Porter, M. E. (2002). Engaging large classes : strategies and techniques for college faculty. Anker Publishing Company.
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Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective and Enjoyable College Teaching
In this revised second edition, Bridget Arend and James Davis present seven evidence-based approaches to learning: behavioral learning, cognitive learning, learning through inquiry, learning with mental models, learning through groups and teams, learning through virtual realities, and experiential learning. The authors provide practical strategies and examples for applying these approaches across disciplines and teaching modalities to design more purposeful, effective, and engaging college teaching.
Arend, B. D. (2025). Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning: A Resource for More Purposeful, Effective, and Enjoyable College Teaching (J. R. Davis, Ed.; Second edition.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003567509
Generation Z Unfiltered Facing Nine Hidden Challenges of the Most Anxious Population
This generation of students who have grown up in the 21st century are the most social, the most empowered, and also the most anxious youth population in human history. If you are struggling to connect with and lead them, you are not alone. The latest research presented in this book, however, illuminates a surprising reality: The success of the next generation doesn’t depend entirely on them. Their best chance of success starts when adults choose to believe in them, challenge them, and walk with them through the nine greatest challenges today’s youth will face. For their sake, and for the future success of our world, it’s time we started seeing Generation Z—unfiltered.
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How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching
Director of Faculty Development at the University of Mississippi Joshua R. Eyler offers an insightful guide into the different ways that students learn. Eyler delves into developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and anthropology to offer a guide organized around five general themes: curiosity, emotion, authenticity, sociality, and failure. In conversation with these themes, he uses interviews and observations of higher education teaching to illuminate how learning styles significantly impact knowledge absorption.
How Learning Works: Eight Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching
How Learning Works bridges learning-based research evidence to practices for improving college teaching. The authors specifically address seven learning principles, including prior student knowledge, student organization of knowledge, student motivation, mastery of skills, the influence of practice and feedback, the intersection of emotional, social and intellectual development as well as self-directed learning.
Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching
The director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching, Derek Bruff, observes that new technology often drives teaching and learning goals when the reverse should be true. By providing examples of creative in-class uses of technology, Bruff champions the intentional and meaningful integration of technology into the classroom. He pivots away from the question of how to incorporate new tech tools, instead asking why technology is used and what we can gain from it.
Bruff, D. (2019). Intentional tech : principles to guide the use of educational technology in college teaching (First edition). West Virginia University Press.
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning debunks common myths around best learning practices, and proposes that a long-term, repetitive process makes learning more effective. The authors explain that learning should be effortful and focused on the long-term retrieval of information built on prior knowledge, rather than the "cramming" or intensive "practice makes perfect" method.
Brown, P. C. (2014). Make it stick : the science of successful learning. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674419377
Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology
Michelle D. Miller, Co-Director of the First Year Learning Initiative and Professor of Psychology at Northern Arizona University, provides strategic ways for university faculty and instructors to align classroom technology with key principles of human cognition, namely attention, memory and thinking. Minds Online, written in a conversational and accessible tone, begins with a discussion of the impact of technology in contemporary higher education settings.
Miller, M. D. (2014). Minds online : teaching effectively with technology. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674735996
The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching
David Gooblar, author of the popular column “Pedagogy Unbound” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, provides a guide for scholars on teaching and learning. This guide is accessible for scholars of any discipline and at any level of teaching experience. Readers can learn a variety of information such as course design, encouraging student discussion, and strategies to foster active learning in the classroom. While most academics are trained to research first, this guide helps instructors strengthen their teaching skills.
Reference:
Gooblar, David. The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2019.
Optimizing Teaching and Learning: Practicing Pedagogical Research
This book will serve as a guide for anyone who is interested in improving their teaching and the learning of their students, while contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning. It bridges the gap between the research and practice of SoTL, with explicit instructions on how to design, conduct, analyze, and write up pedagogical research, including samples of actual questionnaires and other materials (e.g., focus group questions).
Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks: Decode the Critical Thinking of Your Discipline
Decoding the Disciplines is a widely-used and proven methodology that prompts teachers to identify the bottlenecks – the places where students get stuck – that impede learners' paths to expert thinking in a discipline. The process is based on recognizing the gap between novice learning and expert thinking. This book presents a seven-step process for uncovering bottlenecks and determining the most effective way to enable students to surmount them.
Quick Hits for New Faculty: Successful Strategies by Award-Winning Teachers
This is the third and latest book in the "Quick Hits" tradition of providing sound advice from award-winning college faculty. This volume is designed to help new faculty negotiate the challenges of college teaching. Articles and strategies range from planning for that first day in the classroom, to evaluating student learning, documenting teaching, and understanding the politics of teaching and learning in the department and institution.
Relationship-Rich Education: How Human Connections Drive Success in College
From their positions as prominent teaching and learning leaders at Elon University, Peter Felten and Leo Lambert deliver their educational perspectives after interviewing hundreds of students, faculty, and staff nationwide. They find that strong human relationships, forged by supportive and inclusive scholastic environments, are perhaps the greatest contributors towards a student’s success in higher education. This especially applies to first-generation students, who often face additional hurdles and inequities.
Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education : how human connections drive success in college. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Scientific Teaching
Seasoned classroom veterans, pre-tenured faculty, and neophyte teaching assistants alike will find this book invaluable. The authors of this book have distilled key findings from education, learning, and cognitive psychology and translated them into six chapters of digestible research points and practical classroom examples. This book encourages the reader to approach teaching in a way that captures the spirit and rigor of scientific research and to contribute to transforming how students learn science.
Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes
Considering Course Impact
The concept of small teaching is simple: small and strategic changes have enormous power to improve student learning. Instructors face unique and specific challenges when teaching an online course. This book offers small teaching strategies that will positively impact the online classroom.
Darby, F.; Lang, J. M. Small Teaching Online : Applying Learning Science in Online Classes; Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Brand: San Francisco, CA, 2019.
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Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning
James Lang, English professor and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, explains how small but powerful modifications in course design and teaching can yield positive results in higher ed settings. He groups these modifications into three broader categories: 5-10 minute classroom activities; one-time course interventions; and small modifications in course design or communication.
Reference:
The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion
In friendly, readable prose, Sarah Rose Cavanagh argues that if you as an educator want to capture your students' attention, harness their working memory, bolster their long-term retention, and enhance their motivation, you should consider the emotional impact of your teaching style and course design. To make this argument, she brings to bear a wide range of evidence from the study of education, psychology, and neuroscience.
Reference:
Cavanagh, S.R. (2016). The spark of learning: Energizing the college classroom with the science of emotion. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press.
Student Engagement Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty
This book offers college teachers a dynamic model for engaging students and includes over one hundred tips, strategies, and techniques that have been proven to help teachers from a wide variety of disciplines and institutions motivate and connect with their students. The ready-to-use format shows how to apply each of the book's techniques in the classroom and includes purpose, preparation, procedures, examples, online implementation, and more.
Barkley, E. F. (2010). Student engagement techniques a handbook for college faculty. Jossey-Bass.
Teach Students How to Learn
For over a decade Saundra McGuire has been acclaimed for her presentations and workshops on metacognition and student learning because the tools and strategies she has shared have enabled faculty to facilitate dramatic improvements in student learning and success. Her methods can often be accomplished in a single session, transforming students from memorizers and regurgitators to students who begin to think critically.
McGuire, S. Y. (2023). Teach students how to learn: Strategies you can incorporate into any course to improve student metacognition, study skills, and motivation.
Teaching at Its Best: A Research-based Resource for College Instructors
This bestselling, research-based toolbox for college instructors at any level is packed with practical guidance, proven techniques, and expert perspectives. This new fourth edition features five new chapters on building critical thinking into course design, creating a welcoming classroom environment, helping students learn how to learn, giving and receiving feedback, and teaching in multiple modes, along with the latest research and new questions to facilitate faculty discussion.
Nilson, L. B. (2016). Teaching at its best : a research-based resource for college instructors (Fourth edition). Jossey-Bass, a Wiley imprint.
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Teaching Interculturally: A Framework for Integrating Disciplinary Knowledge and Intercultural Development
Amy Lee, Robert Poch, Mary Katherine O'Brien and Catherine Solheim wrote this book to lay out a pedagogical framework for allowing a diversity of voices and experiences to emerge in the classroom. By implementing certain practices in the classroom, instructors can draw on the diverse perspectives of all students to create an inclusive, student-centered learning environment.
Lee, A. (2017). Teaching interculturally : a framework for integrating disciplinary knowledge and intercultural development (1st ed.). Stylus. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003447399
Teaching What You Don't Know
Therese Hurston, the Founding Director for the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Seattle University, wrote this book based on numerous interviews she conducted with university faculty across a variety of disciplines. In her interviews, she spoke with faculty members about the growing need to teach outside of one's academic expertise and how professors often feel only about "10 minutes ahead" of students in preparing for new classes.
Huston, T. (2009). Teaching what you don't know. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Understanding by Design
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe introduce the concept of backward design to curriculum development as the "UbD model", which encourages instructors to begin their course planning with learning outcomes in mind and to then fit the lectures, activities and materials around these desired learning outcomes. The authors draw on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD model to greatly expand their work.
Wiggins, G. and J. McTighe. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd edition). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
What the Best College Teachers Do
What makes a great teacher great? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study, supports it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Most of all, they believe in two things: that teaching matters, and that students can learn. Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity, compassion, and students discovering new ideas and the depth of their own potential.
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.