New York Times reporter John Branch's riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch's work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper. Branch is renowned for covering the offbeat in the sporting world, from alligator hunting to wingsuit flying. Sidecountry features such classic Branch pieces, including "Snow Fall," about downhill skiers caught in an avalanche in Washington state, and "Dawn Wall," about rock climbers trying to scale Yosemite's famed El Capitan. In other articles, Branch introduces people whose dedication and decency transcend their sporting lives, including a revered football coach rebuilding his tornado-devastated town in Iowa and a girls' basketball team in Tennessee that plays on despite never winning a game. The book culminates with his moving personal pieces, including "Children of the Cube," about the surprising drama of Rubik's Cube competitions as seen through the eyes of Branch's own sports-hating son, and "The Girl in the No. 8 Jersey," about a mother killed in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting whose daughter happens to play on Branch's daughter's soccer team. John Branch has been hailed for writing "American portraiture at its best" (Susan Orlean) and for covering sports "the way Lyle Lovett writes country music-a fresh turn on a time-honored pleasure" (Nicholas Dawidoff). Sidecountry is the work of a master reporter at the top of his game.

The tragic death of hockey star Derek Boogaard at twenty-eight was front-page news across the country in 2011 and helped shatter the silence about violence and concussions in professional sports. Now, in a gripping work of narrative nonfiction, acclaimed reporter John Branch tells the shocking story of Boogaard's life and heartbreaking death. Boy on Ice is the richly told story of a mountain of a man who made it to the absolute pinnacle of his sport. Widely regarded as the toughest man in the NHL, Boogaard was a gentle man off the ice but a merciless fighter on it. With great narrative drive, Branch recounts Boogaard's unlikely journey from lumbering kid playing pond-hockey on the prairies of Saskatchewan, so big his skates would routinely break beneath his feet; to his teenaged junior hockey days, when one brutal outburst of violence brought Boogaard to the attention of professional scouts; to his days and nights as a star enforcer with the Minnesota Wild and the storied New York Rangers, capable of delivering career-ending punches and intimidating entire teams. But, as Branch reveals, behind the scenes Boogaard's injuries and concussions were mounting and his mental state was deteriorating, culminating in his early death from an overdose of alcohol and painkillers. Based on months of investigation and hundreds of interviews with Boogaard's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, Boy on Ice is a brilliant work for fans of Michael Lewis's The Blind Side or Buzz Bissinger's Friday Night Lights. This is a book that raises deep and disturbing questions about the systemic brutality of contact sports-from peewees to professionals-and the damage that reaches far beyond the game.

This latest volume in the Learning in Higher Education series, Learning-Centred Curriculum Design in Higher Education is written to inspire and empower university teachers to engage in curriculum design processes that centre both the learning process and the learning outcomes of students. The book is structured by a central model of curriculum design, which links together learning (how students learn versus what students learn) and curriculum design (the process by which we design versus what we design). The book holds ten illustrative examples of learning-centred curriculum design spanning four distinct approaches. The chapter authors are all pioneering learning-centred activities in their respective curricula. The book is truly international, with authors from Denmark, England, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Turkey, and the USA. The beauty of this book is that it was written by reflective curriculum design practitioners, as they have experienced personal success with their curriculum (re)design processes. All chapters have been written with a "Yes, we did it!" attitude. The book aims to inspire university teachers and encourage investment in designing a more learning-centred curriculum. As the evidence from these examples shows, there are great benefits for students' engagement, motivation, self-efficacy, learning outcomes, and employability.

This latest volume in the Learning in Higher Education series, New Innovations in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education presents primary examples of innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education. The authors - scholars of teaching and learning from universities across the globe - all share the ambition to develop educational provisions to become much more learning-centred. Such learning-centredness is key to quality enhancement of contemporary higher education and may be achieved with a variety of methods. The chapters document innovative teaching and learning practices within six areas: Engaging Students through Practice - Student-Centred e-Learning - Technology for Learning - Simulation - Effective Transformation - Curriculum Innovations The book is truly international, containing contributions from Australia, Denmark, England, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Qatar, Scotland, South Africa, Tasmania, Vietnam, and the USA. Although the educational contexts are very different across these countries, there appears to be a striking similarity in the approach to innovative teaching and learning - a similarity which also runs through the six areas of the book. Whether scholars of teaching and learning engage in simulations, e-learning, transformation or use of modern technologies, they work to empower students.

New York Times reporter John Branch's riveting, humane pieces about ordinary people doing extraordinary things at the edges of the sporting world have won nearly every major journalism prize. Sidecountry gathers the best of Branch's work for the first time, featuring 20 of his favorites from the more than 2,000 pieces he has published in the paper. Branch is renowned for covering the offbeat in the sporting world, from alligator hunting to wingsuit flying. Sidecountry features such classic Branch pieces, including "Snow Fall," about downhill skiers caught in an avalanche in Washington state, and "Dawn Wall," about rock climbers trying to scale Yosemite's famed El Capitan. In other articles, Branch introduces people whose dedication and decency transcend their sporting lives, including a revered football coach rebuilding his tornado-devastated town in Iowa and a girls' basketball team in Tennessee that plays on despite never winning a game. The book culminates with his moving personal pieces, including "Children of the Cube," about the surprising drama of Rubik's Cube competitions as seen through the eyes of Branch's own sports-hating son, and "The Girl in the No. 8 Jersey," about a mother killed in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting whose daughter happens to play on Branch's daughter's soccer team. John Branch has been hailed for writing "American portraiture at its best" (Susan Orlean) and for covering sports "the way Lyle Lovett writes country music-a fresh turn on a time-honored pleasure" (Nicholas Dawidoff). Sidecountry is the work of a master reporter at the top of his game.

The theme of this book is digital marketing. We now live in the digital age - indeed, there are more than 3 billion people connected to the internet. For every 100 people on the planet, there are 96 mobile telephone subscriptions. And more and more of our everyday objects - cuddly toys, cars, even kettles - have created an "internet of things." It is no surprise, therefore, that companies are eager to harness this digital world. Marketers, in particular, hope that so-called digital marketing will allow them to gain new customer insights, refine customer segmentation, and communicate to customers more efficiently and effectively. They anticipate that the digital age will offer possibilities for new product innovation, advanced methods for engaging customers and original vehicles for creating brand communities. Despite the pervasiveness of digital technologies, however, digital marketing is seemingly still in its infancy. To begin, what exactly is digital marketing? The term is commonly used, but its meaning - its scope, outline, boundary and limits - is far from concise. This book explores the realities of digital marketing, with contributions from both academics and practitioners who are experts in the field.

Technology-Enhanced Learning in Higher Education is an anthology produced by the international association, Learning in Higher Education (LiHE). LiHE, whose scope includes the activities of colleges, universities and other institutions of higher education, has been one of the leading organisations supporting a shift in the education process from a transmission-based philosophy to a student-centred, learning-based approach. Traditionally education has been envisaged as a process in which the teacher disseminates knowledge and information to the student, and directs them to perform - instructing, cajoling, encouraging them as appropriate - despite different students' abilities. Yet higher education is currently experiencing rapid transformation, with the introduction of a broad range of technologies which have the potential to enhance student learning. This anthology draws upon the experiences of those practitioners who have been pioneering new applications of technology in higher education, highlighting not only the technologies themselves but also the impact which they have had on student learning. The anthology illustrates how new technologies - which are increasingly well-known and accepted by today's 'digital natives' undertaking higher education - can be adopted and incorporated. One key conclusion is that learning remains a social process even in technology-enhanced learning contexts. So the technology-based proxies we construct need to retain and reflect the agency of the teacher. Technology-Enhanced Learning in Higher Education showcases some of the latest pedagogical technologies and their most creative, state-of-the-art applications to learning in higher education from around the world. Each of the chapters explores technology-enhanced learning in higher education in terms of either policy or practice. They contain detailed descriptions of approaches taken in very different curriculum areas, and demonstrate clearly that technology may and can enhance learning only if it is designed with the learning process of students at its core. So the use of technology in education is more linked to pedagogy than it is to bits and bytes.

Assessing Learning in Higher Education addresses what is probably the most time-consuming part of the work of staff in higher education, and something to the complexity of which many of the recent developments in higher education have added. Getting assessment 'right'- that is, designing and implementing appropriate models and methods, can determine the future lives and careers of students. But, as Professor Phil Race comments in his excellent and thought-provoking foreword, students entering higher education often have little idea about how exactly assessment will work, and often find that the process is very different from anything they have previously encountered. Assessing Learning in Higher Education contains innovative approaches to assessment drawn from many different cultures and disciplines. The chapter authors argue the need for changing assessment and feedback processes so that they embrace online collaboration and discussion between students as well as between 'students' and 'faculty'. The chapters demonstrate that at some points there is a need to be able to measure individual achievement, and to do this in ways that are valid, transparent, authentic - and above all fair. Assessment and feedback processes need to ensure that students are well prepared for this individual assessment, but also to take account of collaboration and interaction. The respective chapters of Assessing Learning in Higher Education all of which are complete in themselves, but with very useful links to ideas in other chapters, provide numerous illustrations of how this can be achieved.

One of the most significant recent trends in Higher Education has been the move from a focus on teaching to one on learning. But, as anyone who has ever run programmes or courses will recognise, both the physical geography and the ethos of the location have major impacts on the quality of the resulting learning experience. Hence the current interest in learning spaces - considered here as 'sites of interaction.' The fourteen chapters of this anthology, produced by the international Association Learning in Higher Education's well-tested and rigorous methodology, discuss the concept of learning spaces, the pedagogy of learning spaces, and the way learning spaces are changing. Learning Space Design indicates that the evolution of learning spaces is, and ought to be, a contested area which cannot be resolved just through a formal building commissioning process. It is important to make explicit the nexus between educational philosophy and architectural design of physical and/or virtual learning spaces, especially if the aim is to increase student agency, interaction, and collaboration. Learning Space Design puts the spotlight on an important, but often overlooked, dimension of teaching and learning processes in higher education. It is a rallying call for a mission to explore further the nature and purposes of learning spaces, and it should be essential reading for all those designing, delivering or evaluating teaching and learning in higher education. About the editors Lennie Scott-Webber is Director Education Environments of Steelcase Education Solutions at Steelcase Inc. in Grand Rapids, U.S.A. John Branch is Academic Director of the part-time MBA programmes and Lecturer of Marketing at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business, and Faculty Associate at the Center for Russian, East European, & European Studies, both of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, U.S.A. Paul Bartholomew is Director of Learning Innovation and Professional Practice at Aston University in Birmingham, England. Claus Nygaard is executive director of LiHE and executive director of cph: learning institute.

This latest volume in the Learning in Higher Education series, Innovative Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, brings together examples of teaching and learning innovations, within the domain of higher education. The anthology is diverse in nature and showcases concrete examples of innovative teaching and learning practices in higher education from around the world. The contributions come from all scientific disciplines and in all teaching and learning contexts. The twenty-eight inspiring examples in this volume show considerable diversity in their approaches to teaching and learning practices; at the same time they improve both student engagement and student learning outcomes. All the authors argue that their innovative approach has helped students to learn differently, better, and more. For those involved in higher education, there is a lot to be gained from reading these narrative accounts of innovative teaching and learning.