Perspectives on the improvement of college instruction are offered. External forces that focus attention on the quality of college instruction are identified, including: the demand for good teaching by two groups of nontraditional students (low-performing students and adult students); technology, and especially new interactive technologies; the growing interest in assessment and program evaluation; the new emphasis on alterable variables in educational research; the lack of mobility for faculty members; and low morale among the teaching faculty. While the classroom lecture method is the method of choice for college teachers, one promising method for better learning of subject-matter content has been the Personalized System of Instruction, which emphasizes student involvement, high expectations, and assessment and feedback. Problems arise when colleges that are primarily teaching institutions turn to faculty publication as their route to distinction. For undergraduate education to improve, teachers will need support of their colleges, including the commitment to evaluate teaching performance in decisions to hire, promote, and tenure faculty members. It is recommended that research on teaching and learning should be done in classrooms across the nation by classroom teachers ("classroom researchers.")
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education