Promoting High Quality Teaching Practices in Higher Education: Lessons Learned from the USA

The issue of quality in higher education is an ongoing concern that has received considerable international attention. There are many different metrics that have been proposed, including preparation of faculty, selectivity, graduation rate, placement of graduates and so on in order to measure the quality of an educational institution. In this chapter we do not address the issue and difficulties associated with how to mea- sure the quality of an educational institution. Rather, we start with the premise that important contributors to the quality of an educational institution are the instructional practices used by its faculty. Based on this perspective, we focus on strategies that have been shown to, and can be employed to, improve the instructional practices used in higher education.