For the growing number of faculty requiring extensive student writing in and out of class, improving students' facility with the language is secondary to the idea that writing helps students learn subject matter. The additional communication between student and professor also improves classroom environment. However, empirical evidence is…

This paper describes the WRITE UP strategy for helping emotionally disturbed students overcome fears of creative writing, organize their thoughts and improve their writing skills. The writing process is covered from subject selection and brainstorming through composition to editing and the final draft, with grading seen as a teaching tool. (PB)

Explores the interrelationship of learning, language and literature. Suggests assignments that allow students to respond like readers rather than like apprentice critics. Asserts that writing is not merely recording, and reading is not merely decoding. States that confusions about meaning and syntax disappear when writers read their own work…

Describes a Computer Information Systems course in which verbal communication processes are thoroughly integrated into the course without disturbing the technical content. Discusses the speaking, listening, writing, and reading activities associated with the course. Describes the challenges (for instructors as well as students) associated with the…

Asserts that international economics textbooks pay too little attention to the complexity of issues and problems facing individual nations. Describes a country report project included as part of a college-level international or development economics course. Provides two student instruction sheets and a sample country report. (CFR)

Advocates allowing students to suggest topics for courses and to take an active role in planning the objectives and outline for a course's activities. Provides a writing exercise in which students are asked at the start of a course to select one reading from the anthology for inclusion in the course. (HB)

Describes a multicultural unit for fifth graders in which each students receives a prop, develops a character around it, and writes a sketch which is videotaped and critiqued. Describes how students' characters identify their differences and figure out how to get along. Notes that students' ongoing relationships with eighth-grade penpals provided…

Contends that a college-level capstone course in sociology should synthesize prior knowledge and foster continuing affilation with the discipline. Discusses six pedagogical principles that promote a continuing relationship with sociology. Describes content and instructional procedures used in a senior seminar at Rider College (New Jersey). (CFR)

College faculty can minimize problems in grading students' cooperative projects by carefully structuring the five basic elements of formal cooperative learning groups: positive interdependence; individual and group accountability; face-to-face promotive interaction; teamwork skills; and group processing. There must also be sufficient reason for…

This article, in a series on computer technology and distance education, focuses on "Type II Technology," courses using textbooks and course guides for primary delivery, but enhancing them with computer conferencing as the main vehicle of instructional communication. Discusses technology proficiency, maximizing learning in conferencing…

Describes a student-directed learning program called "AIDS in Science and Society" that was developed as a resource-based, collaborative project at the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom) for a first-year biology class. Discusses materials, written assignments, oral presentations, and feedback from students and faculty, and includes a…

Presents a one-class-period writing exercise (including handout) which uses a short excerpt from a 1948 book called "Making Housekeeping Easy" to teach the linking of claims to evidence as well as academic citation practices. (SR)

Describes a CD ROM created by three co-authors which presents a multimedia exposition and comparison of three parallel productions of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by a single director staged sequentially at the Tokyo Globe in 1994. Provides specific suggestions as to how secondary English teachers could use this material.…

Describes the potential of a FirstClass server in audioconferencing courses at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks using telecommunications, e-mail, student-to-student interaction, submission of assignments, e-mail, timely instructor feedback, and the transfer of files and multimedia documents. Student surveys indicated some positive aspects of…

Outlines conditions that should be present in an electronic tutoring system, and describes the Electronic Homework system. Discusses the modules contained in the system's two main components--the Computer Tutor and Homework Administrator. Gives an example of the tutoring process, and examines the overall effects of using Electronic Homework. (AEF)