Implementing remote and blended higher education courses motivated the design for new support services for autonomous learning. Thus, combining a competence-based approach and self-regulation, the COMPER project offers a service to be used in addition to the courses. It consists of a graphical presentation of the learners' competency profile…

The amount of information contained in any educational data set is fundamentally constrained by the instructional conditions under which the data are collected. In this study, we show that by redesigning the structure of traditional online courses, we can improve the ability of educational data mining to provide useful information for instructors.…

Mental health and wellness is a concern, not only for students, but for instructors in higher education as well. Course design can have a positive or negative impact on both student and instructor wellness, especially around stress and anxiety with assessments, workload, and due dates. Factors of course design such as policies and values, academic…

Attracting and retaining teachers for rural and remote areas is a pervasive global problem. Currently, teacher education in Canada is primarily delivered in face-to-face formats located in urban centres or satellite campuses. There is a need for relevant and responsive teacher education programs for rural pre-service teachers. Recognizing this…

This presentation examines the application of Web 2.0 to an online scientific language course. The online Computer Science English Course (CSEC), funded by a national PRIN project and targeted to students enrolled in the undergraduate course in Applied Computer Science (ACS) at the University of Urbino-Italy, aims to promote the acquisition of…

Drawing evidence from a survey study she conducted in her own online classes as well as from current literature, the author, who has developed and taught several MA TESOL online courses, argues that the effectiveness of online instruction is not determined by the technology but by the instructor. An effective online instructor is one who is truly…

This paper calls for the standardization of the speech communication basic course at large universities where many sections are taught a semester by graduate students and adjunct faculty. The paper discusses the faculty vision for a standardized basic communication course and suggests that standardization is one of the ways that communication…

In the personalized system of instruction (PSI) used in beginning communication courses at George Mason University (Virginia), the students do more than read text materials and master cognitive course objectives. They are encouraged to have experiences that reinforce what they read and to consider how these experiences relate to everyday life. The…

An undergraduate student offers reflections and observations on college course syllabi. Since the syllabus is the student's guide through the course, it should be clearly organized allowing students to find information quickly. It should outline the expectations that students and instructor will have during the course. In addition a syllabus must…

This paper presents an innovative way to teach Introduction to Political Science by breaking with the convention of teaching a survey course of all political science subfields. Each student is invited to be a participant-observer and apply political science perspectives to the data collected from his/her personal polity. Readings, research, and…

This study was designed to test a less labor intensive data collection methodology than the extensive interview system developed by the University of Michigan currently used to show the relationship between faculty rationale and course description. Subjects (N=210) were randomly selected faculty members each of whom was responsible for teaching…

Designed in response to the need for public relations education to produce well-trained, culturally sensitive practitioners for the workforce and the marketplace, an innovative semester-length course was launched in fall 1990 at Florida International University to enable public relations graduate and undergraduate students to explore the…

A course in semiotics developed and taught for 16 years at Brookline High School in Massachusetts is described. The course uses four published texts, a series of readings, experiments, language games, and exercises in an effort to broaden, objectify, and integrate the students' conception of language. It consists of four units: (1) signs,…

This document examines the educational output of three alternative approaches to introductory macroeconomics at the University of Notre Dame. The framework for evaluation consists of the cognitive and affective tradeoffs entailed by using a new experimental course as opposed to two more traditional courses. The experimental course is a freshman…

The Senior Seminar in Communication Theory at George Mason University was originally designed to provide graduating seniors with an opportunity to study a variety of communication theories from all areas of the discipline. More recently it has also been used as a "capstone" course to assess student outcomes, allowing faculty to observe a…