More and more academically underprepared students enter our colleges and universities, and research suggests that traditional efforts at remediation can exacerbate the self-doubt often experienced by at-risk students. While learning communities have been shown to offer under prepared students the support they need to become active participants in…

"Prior knowledge" (sometimes called schema or background knowledge) is information one already knows that helps him/her make sense of new information. New learning builds on existing prior knowledge. In traditional reporting-style research projects, students bypass this crucial step and plow right into answer-finding. It's no wonder that many…

The authors are both teachers in the Economics Department at Fairfield University, where they share responsibility for the introductory and intermediate economics courses. Student's comment illustrates that they were apparently not reaching their students in ways that achieved their goals: developing students' abilities to understand economic…

Judith Rance-Roney calls on teachers to form intentional learning communities within their classrooms. The Culture Share Club, initially conceived to provide scaffolding for ELL students to acquire English and pass the statewide test in English, legitimized student knowledge by benefitting all students as they prepared materials for lessons and…

Investigates the efficiency of a novel addition to the routine of note taking, writing brief summaries of the lecture material during four-minute breaks within the lecture. A group of students wrote three sets of summaries during a 21-minute lecture and showed significant improvement in understanding over other groups. (MJP)

Influenced by generative and intentional learning environment strategies and tools, a World Wide Web-based tool has been developed to empower learners to build their own Web-based Performance Support System (WPSS) to support learning, professional development, and performance within a domain. Enabling learners to develop their own WPSS…