"Three Big Lessons in Six Years" is both a reflection on the past and a look ahead to the future at Charlestown (C-Town) High School (Boston, Massachusetts) and other early college programs across the country. The purpose of this series is to document essential design elements, operational structures, and critical support for students to…

Higher education institutions are increasingly recognizing the importance of organizational change as they face complex challenges. Leadership learning has been identified as an important way of supporting change management. We describe a leadership learning arrangement that arose in the context of two of the authors needing to learn how to become…

Navigating learning, formal or informal, can be overwhelming, confusing, and impersonal. With more options than ever, the process of deciding what, where, and when can be overwhelming to a learner. The concept of Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) was to bring organization, purpose, and personalization of learning caused by vast resources…

As the United States becomes increasingly more diverse, there will be more demand for a workforce that can navigate languages and cultures. English Language Learners (ELLs) are uniquely positioned to meet this demand and are eager to do so, but colleges and universities will need to prepare them adequately for the tasks ahead and find innovative…

Empire State College's alternative approaches to higher education are described in this report. The college is a nontraditional institution emphasizing the following innovative elements: (1) individualized education, carried out through learning contracts; (2) an open format for easy access, placing minimal constraints on time, place, residence…

This paper describes the personalized instruction program for economic education at Empire State College, Saratoga Springs, New York. Personalized instruction is defined as relating subject content to the personal background, interests, needs, and abilities of the student. Students proceed at their own pace, use materials suitable to their…

Five final reports on the Nursing Curriculum Project of the Southern Regional Education Board are presented. The reports include (1) RN (Registered Nursing) Education: The Basic Issues; (2) Types of RN Programs; (3) Planning and Operating an RN Program; (4) Acclimating the Novice Nurse: Whose Responsibility? and (5) Statewide Planning for Nursing.…

A project at Texas State Technical College developed a curriculum to bridge the gap between the competency level of persons who enter college having completed the secondary component of a tech prep program and those who had not. The project used a technical advisory committee, two task forces, and a panel of experts to identify the competency…

Addresses the question of the choices offered by individualized instruction, referring to the seven years experience with Russian Program I at SUNY, Albany. Describes how this program also provides unusual opportunities to alter and individualize the traditional courses that are taught in parallel with it, at the same institution. (MES)

Reports on the generally favorable response of college students at Ohio State University to the use of computers in elementary German instruction. (AM)

Describes the African language program at Michigan State University, which provides (1) supervised, individualized instruction for high-demand languages, on two levels; (2) regular classroom instruction for Swahili and Hausa; and (3) non-credit, self-instructional programs for low-demand languages. Sample forms are appended. (AM)

Discusses Ohio State University's Individualized Instruction Program for nontraditional college students who are studying Chinese for specific professional purposes. Describes the way the program functions and the resources necessary to deliver instruction while maintaining high quality. The audiotape is the most effective learning tool for this…

A review of stages in the evolution of the language laboratory shows that its function has changed in the past 20 years. Originally it was described as a way of providing a means for abundant practice of audiolingual drills. Currently, it is described as a learning center with multiple resources and functions. It might be characterized as a…

Describes a program that has been a requirement for Hofstra University students majoring or minoring in French for six years. The program offers 20-25 minutes per week of individual conversation sessions with native level speakers. Criteria for selection of personnel and diagnosis of each student's needs are discussed. (MES)

Describes development and implementation of system of individualized instruction at Ohio State University at elementary level in Arabic, French, German, Latin, Russian, and Spanish. Funded by National Endowment for the Humanities, the project involved three components--teacher-assisted, mastery-based, and self-paced instruction (TAMBSPI).…