We tested the long-term effects of a utility-value intervention administered in a gateway chemistry course, with the goal of promoting persistence and diversity in STEM. In a randomized controlled trial (N = 2,505), students wrote three essays about course content and its personal relevance or three control essays. The intervention significantly…

Utility-value interventions, in which students are asked to make connections between course material and their lives, are useful for improving students' academic outcomes in science courses. These interventions are thought to be successful in part because the intervention activities afford students autonomy while they complete them, but no…

The assessment of student learning in general education courses is of critical importance in higher education. This study examines the utility of a writing assignment (application essays) in a basic communication course as an effective assessment tool. The authors conducted a content analysis of student portfolios to determine the extent to which…

Despite 9/11, the seemingly endless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons capabilities, and the Arab Spring and its aftermath, the social studies curricula of high schools throughout the nation generally put little emphasis on the Middle East and Islam as the foundation for understanding vital issues that…

This paper describes a case study of the impact of the introductory psychology course on students' understanding of their life experiences and course-related ideas. Student responses to a final essay assignment were analyzed to construct composites for areas of applied and transformed understanding. Results are important for psychology teachers…

Several months after having completed an introductory economics course, most students are no better able to answer simple economic questions than students who never took the course. The problem seems to be that principles courses try to teach students far too much, with the result that everything goes by in a blur. The good news is that a…

This article presents a written assignment designed to achieve several goals. First, it offers students the chance to identify and examine the "pre-understandings" with which they enter the class, and to consider how these were formed. Once they have been elaborated, these "pre-understandings" inform the instructor and the student about biases and…

The assessment of student learning in general education courses is of critical importance in higher education. This study examined the utility of a particular writing assignment, application essays, as a course assessment tool in a basic communication course. Application essays are one page compositions asking students to describe a communication…

A series of administrative and pedagogical questions about class size and the training of graduate teaching assistants caused the director of the freshman English program and the head of the Humanities department at Michigan Technological University to assemble an experimental class in freshman English. The course consisted of 113 students and 9…

While literature has often been ignored in the English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) curriculum, there are good reasons for including it at all educational levels of ESL instruction. There are universal reasons for exploring literature, including the pleasure and escape it provides. In addition, ESL experts have found that literature encapsulates…