Alan Bain

The Self-Organizing School provides ground-breaking insights and guidance about how schools can fulfill their aspirations for quality and productivity in learning and teaching. The book describes a comprehensive decade long school design process and effort that improves teaching quality and student outcomes. The practical guidance and examples employed throughout the book are supported by one of the most extensive longitudinal studies of a school reform process, including data from over 1600 classroom observations, 12,000 student evaluations and research studies of school change, technology use, student achievement, collaboration, and teacher effectiveness.

The Self-Organizing School provides ground-breaking insights and guidance about how schools can fulfill their aspirations for quality and productivity in learning and teaching. The book describes a comprehensive decade long school design process and effort that improves teaching quality and student outcomes. The practical guidance and examples employed throughout the book are supported by one of the most extensive longitudinal studies of a school reform process, including data from over 1600 classroom observations, 12,000 student evaluations and research studies of school change, technology use, student achievement, collaboration, and teacher effectiveness.

This book challenges the orthodoxy of learning and teaching in higher education with an original change approach entitled the Self-Organizing University (SOU). It assists universities build a comprehensive model of learning and teaching at whole-of-organization scale. The chapters demonstrate how a Self-Organizing University can create:• measurable learning and teaching standards;• student centered program development;• enhanced faculty professional growth and career trajectory;• more efficient and effective organizational design;• better feedback;• powerful use of technologies;• a legitimate connection between quality and productivity.Each chapter includes case examples derived from practical experience that situate the key ideas and concepts in the real day-to-day work of universities. The role of leadership in creating and sustaining a self-organizing university is also a key focus. The chapters target leadership practices that improve learning and teaching quality and productivity and assist universities realize their goals and aspirations for maximizing student learning.

This book examines what collaboration means in practice, and the factors that enable effective team collaboration for learning and teaching in higher education. It explains how academics can work more collaboratively, and how universities can organise and govern themselves by means of collaboration. The book brings together current research and commentaries on collaboration in higher education to provide important guidance derived from a synthesis and evaluation of the existing empirical research and commentaries in the field.The book will benefit all readers who are interested in making their own teams and higher education organisations more collaborative. It will help them plan collaborative innovations in their organisations, identify priorities for professional capacity building, and design collaborative organisational structures.

This book challenges the orthodoxy of learning and teaching in higher education with an original change approach entitled the Self-Organizing University (SOU). It assists universities build a comprehensive model of learning and teaching at whole-of-organization scale. The chapters demonstrate how a Self-Organizing University can create:• measurable learning and teaching standards;• student centered program development;• enhanced faculty professional growth and career trajectory;• more efficient and effective organizational design;• better feedback;• powerful use of technologies;• a legitimate connection between quality and productivity.Each chapter includes case examples derived from practical experience that situate the key ideas and concepts in the real day-to-day work of universities. The role of leadership in creating and sustaining a self-organizing university is also a key focus. The chapters target leadership practices that improve learning and teaching quality and productivity and assist universities realize their goals and aspirations for maximizing student learning.

Transforming the Measurement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education proposes a dynamic new model for educational measurement by reconceptualizing the field of learning analytics. Revolving around the agency and daily work of those in the field, this book describes how colleges and universities can be better structured for quality learning, showcases new tools for gathering emergent feedback, and demonstrates how that feedback can be used effectively across higher education organizations. Leaders and practitioners at all levels are offered new approaches for organizational and technological design that ensure the type of data and the way it is gathered serve the ultimate goal of high quality learning and teaching.

Transforming the Measurement of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education proposes a dynamic new model for educational measurement by reconceptualizing the field of learning analytics. Revolving around the agency and daily work of those in the field, this book describes how colleges and universities can be better structured for quality learning, showcases new tools for gathering emergent feedback, and demonstrates how that feedback can be used effectively across higher education organizations. Leaders and practitioners at all levels are offered new approaches for organizational and technological design that ensure the type of data and the way it is gathered serve the ultimate goal of high quality learning and teaching.

Creating a successful and distinctive approach to learning and teaching at scale is a challenge facing all universities. This brief presents the Self-Organizing University (SOU), a transformational whole-of-organization solution for the design, delivery, and evaluation of learning and teaching in all its forms. It describes the elements of the SOU approach along with the implementation process and expected outcomes. It also explains the rationale and research base for each element of the model and how they are connected to create a university-wide model of learning and teaching. It includes guidance for anyone responsible for institutional improvement in the learning and teaching space.

The Cold Handshake by Alan Bain.A noirish tale recalling the paperback Era.Pacific City, 1952.Crooked. Dirty. Contemptible. Dangerous.That's Largo. That's Pacific City.A grifter in the most remote, the most sleazy city in the world. Largo's life changed forever when he met the girl of his dreams: Rita Fleischer.This was a dame to take things real smooth with. A dame to live for. Now he could forget the scams, the mob bosses and the dirty money.Or he should've.Then Rita was murdered.She became a phantom, a ghost. Rita haunted Largo.And she'd haunt him all the way to the electric chair. . .Reader's caution: This story contains adult themes and frequent language that may cause offence.

After billions of dollars, thousands of studies, and immeasurable effort by educators at all levels, why is the performance of students and teachers so unaffected by technology? Moreover, what should be done to extract genuine benefit from the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution? In this groundbreaking book, technology and education experts Alan Bain and Mark Weston provide research-based evidence for how the widespread application of ICT can provide powerful learning opportunities that lead to lasting gains and achievement. They show how the integrated use of technology at all levels of the educational system can greatly expand collaborative learning opportunities by giving all educational stake holders powerful problem-solving tools and solutions. The approaches presented here are grounded in over twenty years of experience working with classroom teachers, school leaders, association members, and policy makers.

Many aspects of phenomena critical to our lives can not be measured directly. Fortunately models of these phenomena, together with more limited obs- vations frequently allow us to make reasonable inferences about the state of the systems that a?ect us. The process of using partial observations and a stochastic model to make inferences about an evolving system is known as stochastic ?ltering. The objective of this text is to assist anyone who would like to become familiar with the theory of stochastic ?ltering, whether graduate student or more experienced scientist. The majority of the fundamental results of the subject are presented using modern methods making them readily available for reference. The book may also be of interest to practitioners of stochastic ?ltering, who wish to gain a better understanding of the underlying theory. Stochastic ?ltering in continuous time relies heavily on measure theory, stochasticprocessesandstochasticcalculus.Whileknowledgeofbasicmeasure theory and probability is assumed, the text is largely self-contained in that the majority of the results needed are stated in two appendices. This should make it easy for the book to be used as a graduate teaching text. With this in mind, each chapter contains a number of exercises, with solutions detailed at the end of the chapter.

Many aspects of phenomena critical to our lives can not be measured directly. Fortunately models of these phenomena, together with more limited obs- vations frequently allow us to make reasonable inferences about the state of the systems that a?ect us. The process of using partial observations and a stochastic model to make inferences about an evolving system is known as stochastic ?ltering. The objective of this text is to assist anyone who would like to become familiar with the theory of stochastic ?ltering, whether graduate student or more experienced scientist. The majority of the fundamental results of the subject are presented using modern methods making them readily available for reference. The book may also be of interest to practitioners of stochastic ?ltering, who wish to gain a better understanding of the underlying theory. Stochastic ?ltering in continuous time relies heavily on measure theory, stochasticprocessesandstochasticcalculus.Whileknowledgeofbasicmeasure theory and probability is assumed, the text is largely self-contained in that the majority of the results needed are stated in two appendices. This should make it easy for the book to be used as a graduate teaching text. With this in mind, each chapter contains a number of exercises, with solutions detailed at the end of the chapter.

Despite immense efforts to understand schools, we know very little about the contribution they make to student learning. Further, the limited available evidence indicates that the way schools are designed, organized, and managed have only a minimal effect on student outcomes. The Self-Organizing School addresses this problem and the pressing need for reform models that go further, last longer, and posses the capacity to both respect, as well as deeply influence, what teachers and schools do. The Self-Organizing School identifies nine next-generation reform targets and articulates theory and practice for achieving these goals. In doing so, a self-organized school sets a new benchmark for evaluating site-based data and examples of a process that turns theory into practice. This includes better ways to begin a reform process and understand the roles of technology and feedback in the teaching profession. The theory and practice described in the book are backed by more than 1,600 direct classroom observations, an 8-year study of student achievement, more than 12,000 student evaluations, and a 5-year study of teacher perspectives.

Despite immense efforts to understand schools, we know very little about the contribution they make to student learning. Further, the limited available evidence indicates that the way schools are designed, organized, and managed have only a minimal effect on student outcomes. The Self-Organizing School addresses this problem and the pressing need for reform models that go further, last longer, and posses the capacity to both respect, as well as deeply influence, what teachers and schools do. The Self-Organizing School identifies nine next-generation reform targets and articulates theory and practice for achieving these goals. In doing so, a self-organized school sets a new benchmark for evaluating site-based data and examples of a process that turns theory into practice. This includes better ways to begin a reform process and understand the roles of technology and feedback in the teaching profession. The theory and practice described in the book are backed by more than 1,600 direct classroom observations, an 8-year study of student achievement, more than 12,000 student evaluations, and a 5-year study of teacher perspectives.