In 2013 the Vermont legislature enacted Act 77 mandating that students in grades 7-12 develop personalized learning plans (PLPs) to guide them toward high school graduation using proficiency based requirements. In a qualitative self-study the authors document the implementation of a personal learning framework integrating PLPs into a humanities…

As part of its ongoing programs in digital scholarship and the cyberinfrastructure to support teaching, learning and research, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) held a symposium on September 15, 2008 in which a group of some 30 leading scholars was invited to…

Discusses the state of humanities instruction in community colleges and offers suggestions for ways to bolster that curriculum form. (FL)

Many students have been taught to analyze, to memorize, and perhaps to synthesize, but few have been encouraged to be creative--a necessity for being truly satisfied, successful, and happy with one's life. To develop creativity, education should focus on an updated version of the 3 R's: Rationale, Reason, and Resourcefulness. Rationale involves…

The fifth in a series of surveys of computer courses for humanists, this article provides information about past and present courses for those designing such a program. Presents statistics on the numbers of courses offered by departments, the texts used, the types of equipment available, and the programming languages taught. (GEA)

Warns that the worst danger in emphasizing a body of knowledge is that it encourages the superficial form of knowledge currently popular in the game "Trivial Pursuit." Analyzes the game's questions covered in the category on literature. Lists recommendations for humanities professors trying to prepare for the future. (SED)

To see literature as a sign and a symbol simply reasserts the view of the humanities as the embodiment of the highest aspirations of human nature. Human beings are sign givers and symbol makers as they look for the sacred meaning in their lives. Through a college humanities course, some of the symbols that artists employ in fiction, poetry, drama,…

This paper records three plenary sessions held at the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) National Education Conference, August 27-29, 1993. The conference built on what was learned in the first year of the project and reported in ACLS Occasional Paper 20. Sessions allowed participants to talk with colleagues who had been project…

Considers the role of scholars and teachers of speech communication in the humanistic enterprise. (Speech delivered before the Southern Speech Communication Association Convention, Hot Springs, AR, April 8, 1982). (PD)

Integrating critical thinking and reasoning skills with content in the humanities and the social science curricula at the postsecondary level invites students to become co-participants in discovering and constructing knowledge as members of a learning "community." Readers of the research literature on critical thinking confront many…

Many students come to college with little knowledge of or interest in traditional humanities topics; however, a college teacher of humanities can use science fiction as a "door in," a tool to take students from the known to the unknown. Literary elements such as characterization, plot, setting, theme, and point of view are present in science…

Intellectual refinement and spiritual evaluation have been the traditional goals of the humanities and should remain so. If these aims are given up, then the noble endeavors in the humanities such as sustained reflection, intensive research, careful scholarship, inspired teaching, deep learning, and serious discussion will all become discredited…

A humanities course that teaches an appreciation of tradition and culture through the visual arts includes consideration of contemporary art as well as classic paintings and sculpture. Study of Leonardo DaVinci's "Last Supper" provides an exercise in the intellectual approach to religious painting, while the portrait of Mona Lisa by the same…

The humanities are not emphasized in two-year colleges, although junior/community colleges enroll over 30% of all students in post-secondary education. The Center for the Study of Community Colleges is engaged in a multi-phased research project designed to provide information for the National Endowment for the Humanities, which wishes to…

By virtue of its interdisciplinary nature, the Humanities Base program at the University of Dayton encourages carefully designed composition instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogy. Because the Humanities Base themes are set in binary opposites--faith versus reason; autonomy versus responsibility; individual versus…