This research examines whether explicit course-level learning objectives (LOs) affect students' perceptions of courses and ability to recall factual knowledge and analyze political problems. The study compares four sections of the author's introductory world politics course -- two that were provided with the explicit learning objectives and two…

This study examined whether a low-stakes write-to-learn (WTL) assignment improved exam performance. Students in one section of a child development course completed five assignments during a semester, whereby they identified 15 key concepts and related them to six themes (e.g., nature and nurture). Students in another section did not. Students who…

This study reveals the impact of using parallel corpora on EFL students' writing, and how students perceive it. Female undergraduates (n=46) in an EFL writing course in Saudi Arabia were divided randomly into experimental and control groups taught by the same instructor, using the same materials. Students in the experimental group were introduced…

We needed to provide options and to create space for first-year writing courses at a growing tier-one, four-year, public university. Therefore, three faculty members--the program director, the associate director, and a full-time teaching fellow--collaborated to create, pilot, and assess a hybrid version of our writing course. The teaching fellow…

The recent rise of anti-Semitic acts and general lack of Holocaust knowledge highlights the need to integrate Holocaust education across disciplines. An undergraduate criminology class at Queensborough Community College (QCC-CUNY) was aligned with an on-campus Holocaust center exhibit, 'Conspiracy of Goodness', focused on rescuing behaviors of the…

In 1993, writing about their years of feminist collaboration, Carey Kaplan and Ellen Cronan Rose explained that while they sometimes found such endeavors challenging, ultimately they were "exhilarating, consoling, and precious" (559). In the years since then, those working in women and gender studies have continued to advocate for…

Empirical evaluations of practical teaching units integrating content and language in higher education are rare and deserve more attention. The current article aims to narrow this gap by providing an empirical study of an integrating content and language in higher education (ICLHE, Smit & Dafouz, 2012) teaching module. It investigates the…

This article evaluates a writing assignment in which students read a non-fiction book that they chose from a list provided by their instructor, identified examples of social psychological phenomena, and fully explained how those examples fit social psychology concepts. This novel twist on a traditional assignment yielded surprisingly robust…

We explain how collaboratively assessing a writing-intensive general education capstone seminar constituted a high-impact practice for faculty development. Students at the University of Denver complete an Advanced Seminar taught by faculty across the curriculum. Topics and themes vary widely, as do types of assigned writing, making assessment an…

Previous studies about writing assignments in higher education have explained that the library research paper, report on experiment, summary, and article/book review were the most common writing assignment tasks assigned across disciplines. No previous studies have explored writing tasks in the TESOL discipline at a national level. In this study…

Political science faculty have access to a wealth of innovative pedagogies thanks to a comprehensive literature on teaching and learning in the discipline and related fields. Yet, from among the hundreds of documented possibilities, how does one go about deciding which to incorporate into a given course? Few articles have much to say in response…

Studies of university writing assignments demonstrate inconsistencies in the elements examined, making it difficult to achieve a clear understanding of the range, frequency, and characteristics of assignments that students might encounter. In this research study, syllabi from one university college were analyzed to determine the types and…

Learning to write a scholarly literature review is often difficult for undergraduate students. This teaching note examines a pilot study of BSW students' use of a wiki to collaboratively write a literature review in a research course (N=36). Students expressed negative responses toward the assignment and were reluctant to use the wiki. Their…

Much of the work in academic writing has focused on the cognitive rather than the affective and social aspects involved in project-based writing. Emphasis in past research has been on skills and processes of writing rather than on affective factors such as motivation, attitudes, feelings or social factors involving intrapersonal and interpersonal…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether differences exist with regard to music achievement, music self-concept, or student course satisfaction among students enrolled in four different sections of an undergraduate music appreciation course taught from chronological or sociocultural approaches in online or face-to-face formats.…