Developed and put together by the Department of Humanities at Umpqua Community College (UCC) in Roseburg, Oregon, this booklet is intended to clarify (for students, faculty, staff, advisers, and community) the specific function and scope of the writing courses offered in the department. The booklet offers an overview of the department's general…

This report provides information on the education system of Rwanda, and is designed to assist college admissions officers and registrars in the United States with the admission and placement of students from that country. The report contains general information on the geography, people, and history of Rwanda, as well as more specific information…

Conventional grading is so ubiquitous that it is tempting to see it as inevitable and to feel hopeless about making any changes. It is often not reliable nor does it have clear meaning. Also, it does not give students feedback about what they did well or badly. Even while operating under a conventional grading system, composition teachers can use…

This study investigates the content and coding systems of kindergarten and first grade report cards from 57 Connecticut school districts. Report cards differed among districts in number of items, emphasis on curriculum areas and learning dimensions, and coding systems. Kindergarten report cards were more likely to emphasize discrete skills and…

Most educational measurement texts distinguish between norm-referenced (NR), or relative, methods of assigning letter grades to objective test scores, and criterion-referenced (CR), or absolute, methods. Both NR and CR approaches have serious limitations in typical classroom situations, and neither approach, in its pure form, may be entirely…

Proper placement of students into either remedial writing or Composition I can be crucial to their success in higher education. Using a database of nearly 6,000 students who entered an open admissions community college in Texas, the researchers attempted to discover the best predictor of student success in Composition I. For students who took a…

When faced with having to assign a grade to a student's oral proficiency in a small group discussion, how can teachers consistently evaluate each student? Because a student's adeptness at a foreign language can vary from one ability to another, it is unfair to evaluate his or her performance solely by grammatical and lexical accuracy or by any…

This booklet outlines policy options that Texas school districts can use to develop consistent credit-granting policies for migrant students who arrive late or withdraw early during the school year. In addition to advocating grading of migrant students consistently and fairly, the goal of the policies is to enhance the graduation rate of migrant…

Presenting a consistent, integrated approach to the English/language arts, this book describes integrated, research-based principles for the teaching and learning of language, accompanied by numerous examples drawn from either the author's own experiences in the schools or from the professional literature. New and expanded features in this fourth…

One of the biggest problems students face in team projects is social loafing, a situation in which students may view team projects as a free ride. Social loafers let others do the work, knowing that the professor will only grade the completed project. This research examined the performance of students grading other student team members on a group…

A framework is presented for syllabus design in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) instruction. A case is given for a discourse level focus in the ESL classroom, from beginning stages of learning through advanced levels. Following this, three rhetorical modes (critical analysis of fiction, truth-searching logical conversation, and classical…

This handbook is designed to facilitate the placement of foreign students in U.S. colleges and universities. While it particularly emphasizes graduate and undergraduate admissions, it also provides information on many upper secondary and postsecondary programs as well. The handbook provides educational structure profiles on 131 countries and the…

Two studies of influences on self-regulated performance were conducted. The purpose of the first was to determine if the level of performance of college students would be higher if the allowable length of the assignment was greater or smaller. Subjects were 126 education majors at a large state university participating in an extra-credit program…

In response to severe budget restrictions and a shortage of qualified graduate students, a basic speech communications course instituted three innovations: use of undergraduate teaching assistants, contiguous scheduling of lecture and breakdown rooms, and the publication of a textbook supplement with detailed activity guidelines and examples. With…

The effects of a calendar change from the quarter system to the semester system on enrollment patterns, student credit hour productivity, grading patterns, and course completion patterns were investigated. Enrollment and grade pattern data were collected for nine Florida public universities and Iowa State University, for 1980-1982. Additionally, a…