Possession of prior knowledge has been shown to critically influence students' learning in major courses. Yet the topic remains unexplored in the realm of general education in higher education. The study aims at investigating whether students lacking relevant high school knowledge background could benefit in the two courses, one inclined to…

In the past few decades the core of bibliometrics has predominantly been "scientometric" in nature, due to the first commercial citation index having been created for scientific journals and articles. The production of citation indexes for books implies that proper education related to their use is now becoming critical. A new breed of…

The Bard College Clemente Course in the Humanities (Clemente) has little in common with the market-driven ideology that undergirds most adult learning today. Instead, it is built on the belief that liberal education can offer adult students the possibility of personal change by fostering critical reflection. Across 31 courses in the US and Puerto…

In this essay David Lea approaches the decline in the study and teaching of the humanities within the university context from a financial perspective. As humanities departments are either closed down or have their curriculum attenuated, it is obvious that the revenue previously available to support such programs has not been forthcoming. This…

The article analyzes the transformation of the methodological toolkit for teaching humanities and sciences in the Russian Federation. The method of case study, being widely spread in modern higher education research, is used as an example to illustrate the attempts to implement the best practices of foreign educational technology into tertiary…

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…

This systematic analysis examines effectiveness research on online and blended learning from schools, particularly relevant during the COVID-19 pandemic, and also educational games, computer-supported cooperative learning (CSCL) and computer-assisted instruction (CAI), largely used in schools but with potential for outside school. Eight research…

This paper outlines the findings from a research project on students' conceptions of learning in a series of international online collaborative seminars that involved partner institutions from Europe and the US. The lead institution was an international, graduate university in Europe. The study was conducted with the aim of exploring the…

The academic disciplines and values of the humanities in western cultures run from the Greek trivium--grammar, logic, rhetoric--to modern-day studies in history, philosophy, religious studies, literature, languages, art history, and some interdisciplinary studies. What is their future, and what is their relationship to honors education? Are the…

Research on authentic learning has been predominantly focussed on skills-based training: there is a paucity of research on models of authentic learning available for adaptation in the humanities undergraduate classroom. In this article, I will seek to address this gap by proposing that legal trials are ideal models for designing authentic learning…

This article examines the use of silence as a constructive teaching tool in the classroom rather than as a punitive measure. The author offers suggestions for the inclusion of silence to benefit students specifically in a literature high school classroom.

Today's doctor is as much a humanist as a scientist. Medical schools have responded to this change by introducing a variety of courses, most notably those concerning the humanities and ethics. Thus far, no one has examined the extent of use of these subjects in Chinese medical schools. The goal of this study is to determine how many and in what…

In a cultural environment that maintains that post-secondary education ought to produce job ready graduates, the importance of the liberal arts and the competencies they teach, along with the questions they engage, often comes up for debate. In such a culture, honors may appear frivolous, elitist, and rear-guard. Angela Marie Salas defends both…

This article describes a unique interdisciplinary course on social media and the self developed and taught by the authors at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The article describes challenges facing humanities faculty who wish to teach on topics with high societal currency and student interest. Current research into humanistic approaches…

This essay examines not only the role the humanities play in the community college curriculum but also how our approach to and understanding of the humanities must change. The defense of a 21st-century humanities has to begin in the experience of our students and not in the traditional canons of our disciplines.