Court ethnography assignments provide a wonderful way to teach observation skills in an unfamiliar legal setting. Most people obtain their knowledge of legal proceedings from television or movies and students are no exception. But teachers can teach students to closely examine court process and legal behavior in a sophisticated way by assigning…

Despite the widespread acceptance of many kinds of nonliterary texts for first-year writing courses, primary scientific communication (PSC) remains largely absent. Objections to including PSC, especially that it is not rhetorically appropriate or sufficiently rich, do not hold. We argue for including PSC and give some practical suggestions for…

Based on existing Learning Object taxonomies, this article suggests an alternative Learning Object taxonomy, combined with a general Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) framework, aiming to transfer the modularized concept of Learning Objects to modularized Virtual Learning Environments. The taxonomy and SOA-framework exposes a need for a clearer…

This paper uses the Open University of the Netherlands as an instructive case for the introduction of e-learning based on the IMS Learning Design specification (IMS LD). The IMS LD specification, as approved by the IMS Global Learning Consortium in 2003, enables the specification and encoding of learning scenarios that describe any design of a…

The "academy" of scholars in United States institutions of higher education generally do not like hearing about genocide in the Americas, especially if it implies or states that this country willingly participated in and benefited from genocidal policies. Well, that about sums up the primary problems that Native scholars have in writing about…

Purpose: The paper presents a new paradigm for implementing action learning in a key subject area in a program. Design/methodology/approach: An action research-based course evaluation methodology was linked to course design and development at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Involving students via effective communication provided a sense of…

Purpose: The recent changes that have occurred in the Spanish university teaching environment, such as growing competition, have caused these courses to become an important differentiating element of what is offered by each university. Therefore, the authors propose to delve deeper into the relationship existing between satisfaction and the intent…

The author recounts a tale about impairment of academic freedom that he experienced while teaching in the MBA program of a respected business school. The management department chair restricted the of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals in a course called "Conflict and Negotiation." The political correctness movement has come full circle when it…

Direct and honest speech has its place, and that place seems not to be at the University of Denver, at least when the speech concerns discrepancies in minority achievement. Richard Lamm's credentials as a scholar and former political leader carried little weight with the chancellor and other administrators at the U of D who adamantly refused to…

If a person teaches a history course required of business or other non-history majors he or she may be confronted with student complaints that the subject is boring and of no use to them in the pursuit of their professional objectives. Because they do not know how to deal with history course material and are used to much smaller, denser reading…

This case addresses the events that unfolded after a high school teacher displayed a Confederate flag in the classroom as a visual aid to instruction on the causes and effects of the Civil War. Although the curriculum specifically required students to learn the meaning and use of symbols and provided for the use of the flag, and the principals…

Mentoring has transformed from traditional master-apprentice relationships into multiple developmental relationships that extend beyond functional, organizational, and geographic boundaries. The Internet provides one mechanism for proteges to identify mentors to help navigate career opportunities. The online mentor activity presented here requires…

Teaching an online course can be exciting, yet time-consuming to the point of infringing on an instructor's other responsibilities and personal time. Faculty typically put many hours into designing and administering an online course, especially the first semester it is offered. The author has heard many horror stories about the massive time…

Most colleges and universities have adopted course management systems (e.g., Blackboard, WebCT). Worldwide faculty and students use them for class communications and discussions. The discussion tools provided by course management systems, while powerful, often do not offer adequate capabilities to appraise communication patterns, online behaviors,…

When does abstinence end and sexual activity begin? In previous generations, the continuum of sexual activity was well-defined in the old baseball analogy. Teens, parents, and teachers knew what going to first, second, or third base involved. For the current generation of young people, sex and abstinence are not so well-defined. As parents and…