Describes a college course which uses field studies to examine communities and small urban places. The course is designed for undergraduate students with little or no field experience and is offered as an intensive two-week session between semesters. (RM)

Guided design involves an instructor in developing a problem that students are expected to solve and then leading them, step by step, through the problem to its solution. This teaching method was used to help students explore how individuals, small groups, and then larger numbers of people in larger areas interact to form the Muncie (Indiana)…

How fiction is used in a college-level political science seminar to teach about democratic decision making and U.S. politics is described. The fiction used is clustered around the following topics: community-level decisions, limits to consensus, group values and politics, acquiring elected offices and trying to keep them, and public bureaucracies.…

Described is a community experience activity, utilizing independent study, which was implemented in a secondary alternative school in Canada. As a result of an initial visit to the local community, students had to come up with a product (e.g., an essay, arrange for a guest speaker to come to class). (RM)

This year-long economics project helped first graders from a low-income area recognize and see themselves as participants in an economic world. Students studied their community to learn about the different types of work people do, goods and services, problems of scarcity, the necessity for rules and goals, the use of natural resources, the…

Precipitation data for Macomb (Illinois) for the period 1912-1981 were the bases for developing classroom exercises that offered college students experience in collecting such data. After students collected the data, they reduced them to manageable proportions, and then examined average long-term relations which may have emerged among yearly,…

Described are two approaches for using newspapers to teach local, regional, or state geography courses to college students. In the first approach, the instructor developed a manual to supplement an introductory geography course which examined spatial patterns of various phenomena as they are found in the Cincinnati (Ohio) metropolitan area. He…

Describes a college-level course in psychology in which students study community issues and problems. Outlines how students work in community program internships and participate in individual and group research projects. Includes course objectives, recommended instructional resources, and evaluation strategies. (CFR)

Describes a year-and-a-half-long history project that involved elementary students in exploring their community's past. Students took field trips, interviewed community persons, taped oral histories, painted murals, and produced a dramatic musical based on their community's history. (RM)

Belle Fourche High School in South Dakota has developed a curriculum for an entrepreneurial approach to education. This paper contains the history of the school's adoption of this program, as well as course descriptions and standards. In 1988, Belle Fourche High School, Black Hills Special Services Cooperative, and the McREL (Mid-Continent…