Standards-based grading (SBG) tightly links student assessment to course learning objectives, providing students with meaningful feedback. A well-designed SBG system should ease first-year engineering (FYE) students' transition to tertiary education by setting clear expectations and enabling self-monitoring of learning progress. However, when…

Students who engage in undergraduate research experiences acquire many benefits, including an understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed, recognition that knowledge can be complex and uncertain, and the habit of viewing knowledge critically. This paper describes a first-year two-course sequence that provides multidisciplinary…

Portion of the Final Report on The National Survey of Undergraduate Programs in English. (Editor)

This article describes the efforts of Southwestern University to provide students with the opportunity to incorporate disability studies into liberal arts education, resulting in the requirement that first-year students take the course "Disability, Society, and Ethical Issues." The content of the course is outlined. (CR)

This paper describes a freshman composition course at a community college which was taught by television and which included thirty 30-minute tapes and an accompanying study guide. Entitled "Writing for a Reason," the primary objective of the course was to help students write effectively so they will be able to fulfill their writing requirements in…

This article documents the conception and development of a tool for providing academic and counseling support to meet the needs of minority adult students in an urban community college environment. Specifically, the tool is a course having as its base the proper assessment of student needs and the revision of the syllabus to fit those needs.…