There have been articles about the competitiveness of elite colleges and universities and the need to provide courses or partial courses or seminars in failure. The idea is legitimizing failure; it happens to everyone after all. But, since some college students have never experienced failure, the colleges need to include instruction on how to…

An emphasis on diversity is one of the greatest challenges in my teaching. Everyone, myself included, enters the course with a set of expectations for human behavior, and literature can be very disruptive of these expectations. International literature, for example, often disrupts the narrative expectations of readers who were trained by stories…

The 2006 Education Act provided an entitlement for all 14 year-olds to take a specialist diploma from 2013. Despite concerns of many educationalists and politicians, the first diplomas will begin in September 2008. New Labour claims that the diplomas are innovative and challenging; however, this article argues that they exhibit many of the…

The proliferation of uses of "certificate" in education and business is rendering the term meaningless. Higher education institutions should seek consensus on the types and categories in order to maintain clarity. A delineation between nonbaccalaureate and postbaccalaureate and between credit and noncredit is a starting point. (Contains…

Certificate programs are concentrated studies for career enhancement, often in response to increasing specialization and need for updating of job skills. Some institutions are developing creative and innovative curricula for evolving and emerging fields. (SK)

Presents a process for developing certificate programs based on components of Kemp's Instructional Design model: learning needs, job tasks, learner characteristics, task analysis, pretesting, learning objectives, teaching/learning activities, instructional resources, support services, learning evaluation, formative evaluation, summative…

The Master's of Business Administration model includes skills, functions, and strategy and focus on traditional "management"; formal knowledge acquired may be unrelated to practical experience. The certificate in management model focuses on competencies, disaggregation, managers, and experiential, work-based learning but may ignore a…

A collaborative approach to program design, marketing, instruction, and evaluation can yield high quality interdisciplinary certificate programs. Evaluation issues include (1) quality of core knowledge; (2) input from beneficiaries; (3) appropriate methodology; (4) appropriate instructors; (5) measurement of learning gains; and (6) curriculum…

In an assessment culture, credit-based education and training are increasingly important in voluntary and community sectors. Examples from Hungary and Britain were used to develop a democratic participative model to identify the need for and relevance of credit and to use qualifications to further civil society. (Contains 53 references.) (SK)

The University of the West Indies failed to obtain funding for a certificate program for adult education, indicating that access is a key issue. The future of Caribbean societies depends on more flexibility from higher education institutions in admissions policies, course offerings, and teaching approaches. (SK)

Offers 15 teachers' reasons for seeking certification from the Journalism Education Association as Certified Journalism Educator (CJE) or Master Journalism Educator (MJE). (SR)

As electronic commerce expands, higher education attempts to keep up with the demand for instruction. Some universities have added a concentration in e-commerce to their master of business administration program and others are adding majors, certifications, or degrees. (JOW)

When carefully designed, taught, and managed, certificate programs can provide access to new careers and social mobility for their graduates, while profiting the sponsoring institution. (SK)

Accreditation of adult learning raises two issues: (1) whether accrediting processes are the right ones and (2) which educational values and principles underlie them. Accreditation based on flexible accumulation and transfer of achievements is needed to document the vital learning outcomes of adult education. (SK)

This discussion of the possible endorsement of library technician programs by the Canadian Library Association examines various program evaluation options, including accreditation, certification, licentiate, and public review. The role of the library technician and guidelines for educational programs are also discussed. (Author/CLB)