Introduction: Teaching and learning at the crossroads

Abstract

This book began as part of an Elon University two-year study investigating the role of course format, delivery, and duration in teaching and learning. Since then, the project has become a global collaboration among higher education professionals who are making conscious decisions to develop, sound innovative pedagogical practices that accelerate, broaden, codify and deepen their students’ cognition, skills, and affect. This book provides a space for these “academic adventurers” to articulate their exciting explorations. We investigate learning within the context of students as whole beings—mind, body, and spirit—engaging all their senses. Similarly, we study effective teaching as a highly reflective praxis in which student, instructor, and institution collaborate, innovate and share in partnership.