This article presents an interview with Rick A. Sheets, who has been working in learning assistance, faculty training, and technology support for over 30 years. He collaborated with Frank Christ as the co-founder and webmaster of the Learning Support Centers in Higher Education (LSCHE) website, a resource established in 1996 for learning center…

The year 2017 saw the publication of one of the strongest endorsements of language education on record: "America's Languages: Investing in Language Education for the 21st Century" (henceforth "America's Languages"). Commissioned by a bipartisan group of members of Congress and authored by the Commission on Language Learning of…

The article argues for the participation and involvement of students in developing learning spaces within higher education. In early childhood education there is a strong emphasis upon rights, democracy and planning learning through listening to young children. Taking inspiration from this, the study explores the use of participatory approaches in…

Frank Christ is the founder and co-director of the Winter Institutes for Learning Assistance Professionals and has been actively involved with learning assistance and learning centers for the past 40 years. In this interview, Christ talks about how learning centers today differ from those with which he was associated at the beginning of his…

This article clearly defines the three crucial pre-implementation principles to maximize the success of Smaller Learning Communities (SLC) in large high schools. Establishing clear understanding for the need of the SLC initiative is the first of these principles. Long term commitment to a sustained plan for relevant SLC professional learning…

The author states her belief that the school library (in this case used synonymously with resource center and media center) fosters creativity, freedom of thought, individualized study, and self-education. She believes, therefore, that the school library should be thought of as an essential component in the instructional process. (KC)

Examines why centers for the support of science and mathematics teaching are needed, how they might function, and how they might be established. Such centers would provide for the professional development of teachers and could give teachers a voice in the development of new science and mathematics instructional materials. (Author/IRT)

In this article, the author talks about the concept of school library as a place of learning for students. He contends that a school library must be conceived in terms of three aspects. First, it should have a creative school library media specialist to lead the principal through a meaningful vision of what the library could be in terms of…

Describes various forms of budgets and discusses concepts in budgeting useful to supervisors of school media centers: line item budgets, capital budgets, creating budgets, the budget calendar, innovations, PPBS (Planning, Programing, Budgeting System), zero-based budgeting, cost-benefit analysis, benefits, benefit guidelines, and budgeting for the…

Small audiovisual center facilities may have advantages over their larger counterparts in areas of cost-effectiveness, encouraging media specialist creativity and instructional effectiveness. (CMV)

This paper advocates the introduction of integrated resource centers in the developing sectors of South Africa as a means for creating technologically and media-literate generations in the Post-Apartheid Era. These centers would offer opportunities for students to utilize educational media in all formats, thereby reducing the resistance to…

This document examines the Learning Communities Program (LCP) at Cerritos College, California. The author contends that, although some innovations work and others do not, the evaluation process is in itself an innovation and is essential to the innovation development cycle. Understanding and reporting program outcomes subsequently advances the…

This article presents an interview with Sharon Macnab and Jillian Boag of Glasgow Science Centre, who discuss the work of their centre and the Scottish Science Centres network. The Scottish Science Centre is a network of four science centres across Scotland: (1) Glasgow Science Centre in Edinburgh; (2) Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh; (3) Sensation…

This report contains the citations for the 1997 Hesburgh Awards for successful, innovative faculty development programs to enhance undergraduate teaching. The University of Missouri-Columbia, General Education Program, was the program judged to have best met the three award criteria: significance of the program to higher education, appropriate…

Argues that reorganizing libraries around the concept of user-focused access will help community colleges meet the information access challenges they face. States that integrated systems and the Internet have enabled libraries to broaden their concept of access from the physical collection to include thousands of other library collections and…