This article shares rationales for group dissertations and offers practical descriptions of how they transpire in one Doctor of Education (EdD) program. Drawing on program experiences and data, it considers how group dissertations promote leadership learning and EdD program proposes using Archbald's criteria of developmental efficacy, intellectual…

Millions of students leave college every year before earning a degree. At community colleges, only a third of full-time students graduate within three years. How can school administrators help students stay in school and eventually graduate? Higher education institutions commonly offer students advising services to help them develop the academic…

Colleges support students with advising, counseling, or coaching in academics and other skills they need to succeed in school. Some colleges enhance those services through reduced adviser caseloads and more comprehensive, frequent guidance, which can improve students' semester-to-semester retention and average credits earned. This overview…

The Virginia Community College System (VCCS) administration identified the need for adequate and proactive advising programs to foster student success. This paper presents a review of "best practices" in advising to determine commonalities, provides a comparison with current VCCS advising practices, and offers recommendations that…

This design case describes an online Ed.D. in Instructional Systems Technology (IST) launched in 2012. We will focus on a key aspect of the design: program advising and students' relationship with their advisors. While the design was responsive in its earliest stages to organizational constraints, legislative requirements and the known…

We describe the roles and duties of a director in developing an introductory actuarial program. Degree plan design, specialized exam courses, internship classes, coordination of efforts with Economics and Finance Departments, opportunities for creating a minor in actuarial mathematics, actuarial clubs, career advice, and interaction with actuarial…

"Voices from the Field: Collaborative Innovations in Early Childhood Educator Preparation" is jointly published by the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC) and the Illinois Board of Education (IBHE), and highlights the accomplished work of many of the state's two- and four-year faculty to redesign early childhood educator…

The Course Selection Matrix Chart helps student and counselor produce an objective ranking of available courses. The versatile and convenient five-step self-help method can accommodate comparison of up to seven courses and may be modified to compare items other than courses. (MSE)

Considers some of the groundwork affecting the foundations of advisory programs in middle schools, focusing on key decisions made in the planning stages of the program. Presents an advisory typology that can be used to compare existing programs, design a new program, or evaluate and renovate an existing program. (KB)

Social and environmental factors, unique to many first-generation college students and other at-risk youth, complicate the job of college advising. This study provides program design, and teaching topics and techniques to further sensitize advisors to social, emotional, and cultural factors that impact their work.

An advising program in the James Madison University (Virginia) psychology department recruits and trains students to provide basic information about majors, careers, field opportunities, and graduate schools to their peers. The work of the 20 volunteers, who serve 900 students, is coordinated by a faculty member. Each peer advisor serves on a…

Kent State University's College of Education implemented a computer-controlled advising system for undergraduate education students, providing information including program descriptions, deadlines and applications, student teaching, and other topics. Preliminary evaluation shows the system able to answer most-asked questions. (MSE)

The structure of undergraduate advising at private institutions that offer degrees beyond the baccalaureate level is considered. Shared advising models are found to be suitable for highly selective, extensive doctoral institutions with sizeable full-time undergraduate populations and relatively basic programmatic structures. Similar but more…

In Florida, State Department of Education emphasis on "Teachers as Advisor Programs" across the state has created a demand for the training sequence described in this paper. Current reasons for promoting the program are listed and a brief training course description is provided. The skills involved are intended to be sequential. The course is…

This paper describes Miami-Dade Community College's (MDCC's) Academic Alert and Advisement System (AAAS), which uses a powerful and sophisticated computer system called Response System with Variable Prescriptions (RSVP) to provide students with information about their progress in a course midway through the term. The paper begins by outlining the…