While the scale of the environmental problems facing the planet mean that effective environmental journalism is now more important than ever, the environmental beat can be extremely challenging for journalists. One way to address this is by providing specialized training for future journalists. This study involves an investigation of the extent to…

This study evaluated syllabi (N = 87) from introductory advertising and public relations courses to examine to what extent and how stated course goals and assignments signal the overall learning orientation of a course and which type of learning orientation--mastery or performance--was most common. Mastery orientations emphasize intrinsic rewards,…

While many US colleges and universities offer specialized writing courses for multilingual students entering as freshmen, including international students, there is typically little instructional support for the academic English needs of international transfer students. This article describes the development and implementation of a writing course…

We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire…

The Institute for the Future offered a course in urban simulation at Wesleyan University (Conn.). The course, described here, asked the class to create its own urban simulation, based on Middletown, Conn., and to play the simulation themselves. This paper describes the structure of the simulation, reviews some of its results, and illustrates the…

An interdisciplinary "Coordinated Quarter of Mass Media Studies," instituted at Bowling Green State University with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, is the subject of this paper. The first part of the paper tells how instructors from the subject areas of popular culture, psychology, sociology, speech communication, and…