Educators continually strive for better ways to engage students in course content and reflect on learning. Process maps originate from the business field while concept maps are used across disciplines. We adapted the process map to demonstrate its use as an effective assessment tool. This article describes the process of implementing Group Process…

Assessment of student learning is crucial to capture accurately student understanding of core concepts and competencies as well as to provide relevant feedback for informing teaching and learning. Yet, many instructors in two-year and four-year undergraduate institutions rarely have pedagogical training to design fair instruction and assessments.…

This article argues that in order to encourage English graduates to expand their horizons, educators should diversify the range of assessments and offer greater opportunities for public engagement. Through a detailed analysis of the final-year elective, "Literature & Medicine," the authors explore the ways in which the design and…

With rapid advances in the biosciences, bioethics has become an important, if not vital part of a comprehensive bioscience education. Students who successfully complete a course in bioethics will be better equipped for writing manuscripts for publication, preparing research proposals for funding bodies and completing applications for research…

Love it or hate it, assessment has become the new reality on college and university campuses. Although measuring student achievement of course outcomes is not an easy task, assessment does not need to be a complex or painful experience. This paper describes the methods used to assess student achievement of the stated course outcomes in…

Discusses problems in teaching social policy courses which students often view as not necessary for practice. Documents teaching of critical social policy to Canadian students and identifies a number of problems in making it interesting, such as the abstract nature of the content, general lack of understanding of the importance of policy analysis,…

Purpose: This paper aims to examine some of the strengths and weaknesses of the use of online tools such as wikis and blogs for assessment purposes, with the aim of proposing future developments and improvements. Design/methodology/approach: The paper utilises a case study approach by examining the outcomes of a new first-year course for all…

Undergraduate geography field courses are relatively rare at American universities, though they can exemplify well the fundamental tenets of learner-centered education. This article reports on an intensive three-week field analysis course taught at Northern Arizona University at Flagstaff, within the Department of Geography, Planning, and…

An investigation on whether a course designed strategically so that assessment methods are aligned with course objectives promotes the students' capacity for higher-order cognitive thinking is presented. Students' view of their own learning process in this course is examined.

Educational assessment in higher education as seen by those who have a key part in the process is considered, with reference to the British system. Ways in which the assessment of students can be categorized, and the need for every assessor to have a clear and explicit purpose are addressed, along with the principles of fairness, validity, and…

The Continuing Education faculty at the University of Colorado School of Nursing considers the evaluation of the long range effects of their continuing education courses a major concern as well as a problem area. (Author)

In 1998, the University if Northern Colorado's General Education Council began to discuss ways of improving assessment of the general education program. Their search ended in a formal implementation of course-embedded assessment in all general education courses beginning in fall 2001. Course-embedded assessment is a classroom-based process that…

Elements that might be included in a course syllabus are discussed, and reasons for a well-written syllabus are briefly noted. The following syllabus elements are covered: course description, course objectives, course structure, textbook and required materials, recommended optional materials, course schedule, deadlines, evaluation methods, policy…

Providing help to teachers and schools attempting to achieve the vision of the Kentucky Educational Reform Act (KERA) which shifts the focus of instruction to student use and application of knowledge, this paper presents a sample course outline as a starting point for course development. The paper begins with one example of a course description…