Art and design students in higher education often prioritize design skills over written communication. With the opportunity to restructure courses around increased asynchronous flexibility arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the author of this manuscript (who is also the course instructor) has developed a hybrid-blended course design in the art…

As students are asked to complete multimodal assignments in their higher education courses, librarians can guide students to the use of open educational resources (OER), as many librarians are already teaching students about copyright and how to respect intellectual property rights. Two instructional librarians designed a one-shot lesson for…

This paper argues that curriculum decision-making in the South African University of Technology (UoT) environment is affected not only by industry and disciplinary demands, but also by socio-structural features and ideologies particular to this educational sector. It supports the view that recontextualisation processes are subject to multiple…

This mini-article describes a faculty meeting process used for curriculum planning. The proffered outline helped us document and assess our program, to focus our conversation, to envision where we wanted students to be, and to share across the curriculum what was happening in our solitary courses. The results prompted us to share with each other…

Randy Bass, Executive Director of Georgetown's Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, recently made the provocative claim that we inhabit a "post-course era." Building on the findings of the National Survey of Student Engagement that show that the places in which undergraduate students demonstrate the highest degree of…

"Understanding Entry-Level Courses in American Institutions of Higher Education" outlines a study conducted by Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) that empirically identifies the characteristics of work at the college- and career-readiness level in English/language arts, science, and social sciences courses. Using a previously…

There is mounting evidence to show that engineers need more than technical skills to succeed in industry. This paper describes a curriculum innovation in which so-called "soft" skills, specifically inter-personal and intra-personal skills, were integrated into a final year mining engineering course. The instructional approach was…

This conceptual paper is based on interdisciplinary work the authors have participated in as part of the renewed push for civic engagement, the various forms it takes, and the multiple constituencies involved in its promotion. We focus on what theoretical and empirical content could be incorporated into courses on aging so that students can be…

English 1311: Expository English Composition is the first semester course in a two-semester first-year composition (FYC) sequence. Both ENG 1311 and its second-semester counterpart, ENG 1312, are required for all students unless they have transfer credit covering this requirement or place out of one or both of the courses via the College-Level…

The growing time pressure that teachers face actually comes in two forms, both of which need to be resolved successfully in order for media literacy education to gain a real foothold in U.S. schools. First, teachers constantly face the challenge of trying to fit all of the content and engaging activities into the school day and school year,…

Purpose: This paper aims to show the process of designing and measuring learning competencies in program development. Design/methodology/approach: The paper includes cross-sectoral comparisons to draw on programmatic and pedagogical strategies, more commonly utilized in vocational education, and transfer the application of these strategies into…

In the accounting communication class, which includes both writing and making presentations, the article-based memo has always been the first assignment, in which students learn business formats and writing style, use of headings, audience analysis, and adapting material for different audiences. As part of a large project to revise the accounting…

Explores how a portfolio assessment project in the University of Cape Town's Chemistry Department developed (within staff) new understandings of the role of writing as a vehicle for learning, which resulted in a reexamination of the relationship of the written assignments to the existing curriculum. Discusses challenges of designing assessment…

Contemporary culture has become increasingly dependent on the visual, especially for its capacity to communicate instantly and universally. Advances in technology fueled this shift. Students must learn to cope with and intelligently contribute to a culture rife with easy access to the visually rich Web, photo dependant social networks, video…

Changes in instructional staff prompted development for different methods of conducting a three year course for college students. The author conducted a research survey during the change and determined that decision making in areas of business are dissimilar to those in education, the latter being rarely final, taking a great deal of time, provoke…