Policy writing assessments are increasingly used as an alternative or supplementary method of assessment within the teaching of politics and policy. Such assessments, often referred to as 'policy briefs' or 'briefing memos', are often used to develop writing skills and to encourage active learning of policy-related topics among students. While…

Objective: Although most community college students intend to transfer to a 4-year college, few ultimately do. We sought to assess how student experiences of the Exploring Transfer (ET) program influenced transfer rates. The ET program was offered by a private, 4-year liberal arts college. Methods: We used data from a cross-sectional survey of…

Background: Treatment fidelity (TF), that is, the degree to which the treatment delivery has adhered to protocol, is an important aspect of establishing treatment validity and reliability. Research has shown that establishing TF is only done in a small percentage of aphasia treatment studies. Aims: This project supports the work of the CommuniCATE…

An evaluation of the use of blogging for developing educational affordances that enhance characteristics of social interaction and reflective dialogue within learning communities. The findings emerge from a study investigating the implementation of course blogs on a media practice programme at a UK university. Literature on the use of course blogs…

A 10 week project in the organic chemistry laboratory provided the opportunity to require students to write four drafts of an introduction. Student understanding of what a good introduction entails was transformed by their fourth draft, as evidenced by higher citation counts and the inclusion of more and better figures, which reveals greater…

Research and writing are critical components of an undergraduate education. Partnerships between economics faculty and campus resources can improve student research and writing skills. Here, the authors describe programs at three different campuses that bridge department and campus resources: the Empirical Reasoning Lab at Barnard College, the…

The study described here analyses a faculty-wide change designed to foster the communication proficiencies of students in a large teacher education college, gathering data from various sources over three years of the new agenda's implementation. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that implementation was progressing on two distinct…

Although an increasing number of first-generation students are beginning tertiary education, many are not completing their degrees. In an attempt to improve retention and graduation rates, learning communities responsive to the unique needs of first-generation students are becoming more common. This paper explores the implementation of ePortfolios…

Most higher education institutions lack a program that promotes students' transfer--that is, reapplication or repurposing--of writing skills and knowledge across the curriculum, a phenomenon that research shows does not tend to happen without deliberate sustained support. This article introduces an online instrument, the Writer's Individualized…

Coursework that instills patterns of rigorous logical thought has long been a hallmark of the engineering curriculum. However, today's engineering students are expected to exhibit a wider range of thinking capabilities both to satisfy ABET requirements and to prepare the students to become successful practitioners. This paper presents the initial…

There is ample theoretical justification for incorporating reflection exercises as a tool for preparing students for life beyond university, yet the utility of such exercises needs to be documented if resources are to be devoted to their implementation. This study describes the implementation and evaluates the effectiveness of a reflection…

A major responsibility of instruction librarians is to help students develop a more extensive and flexible information literacy repertoire. The teaching and learning of information literacy most often takes place in one of two ways: within the context of single 50-minute library sessions, or at the reference desk. In both cases, it usually takes…

In English as a second language (ESL) writing pedagogy, much attention has been given to electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) assessment via social networking sites. However, little is known about how Facebook can be used as an e-portfolio platform. Hence, this paper describes the impact of Facebook-based e-portfolio on ESL students' writing…

This article describes the Community Grant Writing Project (CGWP), a flexible service-learning framework designed for use in writing-intensive courses. The CGWP incorporates best-practice recommendations from the service-learning literature and addresses recent challenges identified for successful service-learning partnerships. In the CGWP,…

This article describes the goals and methods of the international Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement in higher education, and WAC-enriched learning approaches that the author used in teaching a social work gerontology practice course and a sociological theories of aging course. The author's in-class, low-stakes, nongraded writing…