Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series)

A practical nuts and bolts guide for teachers from any discipline who want to design interest-provoking writing and critical thinking activities and incorporate them into their courses in a way that encourages inquiry, exploration, discussion and debate.

In sum, this is not just a book of potential exercies - it is a rich resource for instructors grappling with issues of assessment, critiquing, and the fear of grading overload. These topics and more provided me with some wonderful "aha" moments.

It's the "aha"s that spark my spirit of inquiry - and this is what I strive to share with students.


insightful, thoughtful, and full of useful classroom tools   January 7, 1999
Gregory R. Glau (Flagstaff, AZ United States)
52 out of 60 found this review helpful

Bean's text is a thoughtful and useful pedagogical "storehouse" of ideas that teachers can use in their classrooms. Not only does the text provide the theory _behind_ collaborative/cooperative approaches to teaching, but it provides such ideas for a wide array of subjects. Anyone who values the teaching of writing--whatever the subject area--will find good value in Bean's text.


The Best   November 10, 2006
Composition Teacher
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

This book has revolutionized my teaching procedures. Bean shows us how to be more effective teachers without adding to the time we spend prepping and grading. The students are more engaged and writing better essays, and I am spending the same or less time preparing and grading. There are tips on everything from in-class exercises to constructing formal writing assignments. I recommend it to anyone teaching composition or any class with a critical thinking/writing component.


Using active learning to help students write well and thus think better   February 14, 2010
Howard Aldrich (Chapel Hill, NC USA)
John Bean has written an extraordinarily helpful book for college teachers. He advocates using active learning techniques to help students learn to think critically. How do we help students learn critical thinking? By asking them to externalize their thoughts through writing assignments, thought pieces, minute papers, essay exams, term papers, and many other formats that I had never thought about. Bean argues that instructors should focus on revisions rather than end products, thinking about writing as a process and thus helping students understand that they can always make something better, if they use some simple techniques. As I read, I jotted down notes for my teaching class, ideas on how to revise my first year seminar, and ended up with a desk top covered with yellow sticky notes! As did another reviewer, I borrowed this book from the library but ended up buying my own copy, so that I can re-read it before every semester. I highly recommend this book to anyone using an active learning approach in their college courses.