These four books, each of which is subtitled "Practical Strategies for Teachers, Lecturers, and Trainers," are a very thorough treatment of almost any conceivable aspect of teaching a course, from the earliest moments of planning to assessment and beyond.Ê They contain much that is good and useful for the faculty member in an American university; that they are not more useful is due to two features, one of them avoidable, the other not.

The unavoidable quality is cultural difference.Ê This package is part of a sizable list, published in the U.K. by Kogan Page and now being distributed in the U.S. by Stylus.Ê This is a good development; the British are interested in staff development and our higher education systems are similar enough (and becoming more similar, with increased modularization and semesterization in Britain) that we should be able to profit from one another's thinking on teaching and learning.

One of the first thing that strikes a reader of this series is how different our ideas of "a course" are.Ê Like "college," the British term "course" is much more expansive than the American.Ê One definition of a course is what we would call a major.Ê Another is very close to what we would call a workshop.Ê And there are many variations in between.

The assumption in Planning a Course is that the course will be eighteen hours; this may be three days of six hours each, two hours per week for a nine-week term, or three hours a week for six weeks.Ê In any case this is quite different from American teaching practice.Ê Not only that, but the book is designed to speak to college lecturers, school teachers, and trainers--for instance in business or local government.Ê I believe, too, that the authors assume more support and more teamwork in planning a course than we would expect: the team includes subject matter experts, law advisors, and materials development experts.

Some of the jargon in the book may be more familiar to our British counterparts: SMEs (subject matter experts) and CIDs (course information documents), for instance.Ê One easily recognized quality is the anxiety over availability of money to do courses right.

There are some shortcomings here which are not culturally determined, though.Ê One is a slackness of focus--perhaps resulting from the broad target audience.Ê There is considerable repetition among the four books, something that ought to have been avoided if the authors expected people to read all four of them.Ê Some pieces of advice--for instance, the section on "preparing a learner sub-profile"--seem unduly rigid.

Still, there are many good things here, including thoughtful advice on learning styles and how to accommodate teaching to them; good use of audiovisual aids; use of computer hardware and software (not right up to date, but then the books came out as long ago as 1995), and methods of assessment.

And the broader message of these books is welcome: that teaching a course is a matter for conscientious forethought and planning.Ê I recommend the series for its valuable bits and, secondarily, for the interesting light it sheds on the differences between American and British educational assumptions and practices.

Merritt Moseley
UNC Asheville

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