At some colleges and universities, faculty and administrators look at faculty teaching portfolios documenting classroom performance as an alternative to traditional evaluation methods. The approach underscores teaching as an institutional priority alongside research. Although those who have experienced it applaud the concept, they predict mixed…

With collaborative learning, the professor no longer acts like an expert dispensing knowledge to passive students. The professor becomes "a guide, rather than an authority figure." Undergraduates are used as teaching assistants, peer tutors, and members of research teams. (MLW)

Summarizes the report of Lynne Cheney, chairperson of the National Endowment of the Arts, titled, "Tyrannical Machines: A Report on Educational Practices Gone Wrong and Our Best Hope for Setting Them Right." Noted are gaps in general knowledge, weaknesses of teacher education courses, and university tendencies to value research over teaching. (DB)

More foreign-language professors are stressing speaking rather than grammar in their courses. They are encouraging their students to talk as much as 90 percent of the time. At the heart of the new approach is the concept of "proficiency"--what the student can do with the language. (MLW)

A program developed by a mathematics educator at the University of California at Berkeley is changing the way mathematics and science are being taught to minority group students. The workshop program stresses academic excellence and tackles mathematics problems that are tougher than those in the regular class. (MLW)

A cooperative program of IBM Corporation and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill brings college faculty from around the country to learn new research and instructional uses of computer technology. The Institute for Advanced Technology concentrates on educational problems and uses off-the-shelf equipment and software to solve them. (MSE)

For the growing number of faculty requiring extensive student writing in and out of class, improving students' facility with the language is secondary to the idea that writing helps students learn subject matter. The additional communication between student and professor also improves classroom environment. However, empirical evidence is…

At a recent conference, it was proposed that college teaching will be considered a scholarly activity only when professors conceptualize pedagogy as tightly linked to scholarship, that the core curriculum provides an opportunity to communicate about pedagogy, and that faculty should discuss instruction as freely as they do research. (MSE)

Increasingly, universities are using teleconferencing and computer meeting systems for a variety of administrative and instructional purposes, including more efficient and effective meetings, hiring, business administration education, and writing compositions. Many U.S. and foreign institutions are using the GroupSystems technology developed at…