In teaching a course without a textbook, we introduce a project in which students develop their own text. Details of the project, student reactions, benefits to students, and more are discussed. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The nonfiction literature of the Vietnam War is accessible and engaging to students, and it deals with issues that speaks to students in powerful ways. In addition, the literature can help students better understand their parents and grandparents and the effect on them of the Vietnam War. A number of teachers who have taught the nonfiction…

The assessment literature frequently ignores the quandary of the department resistant to assessment in its discussion of implementing departmental plans and instead focuses on idealized implementation processes. The approach articulated in this article builds on the assessment literature, generating the hypothesis that a grassroots approach to…

This paper outlines the results of a survey into the effects, during the 2 years following publication, of an official report--"Improving Mathematics Education 5-14"--on teaching and learning mathematics in Scottish schools. The purpose of the survey was to examine how the process of implementation worked its way down to the classroom…

Proponents of standards-based reform claim that student achievement testing increases accountability and allows for greater instructional consistency. Performance across schools, boards, provinces, and even countries internationally can be compared and contrasted with the aim of identifying exemplary teaching practices. Teachers can also use…

Service learning projects were incorporated into the curriculum of an undergraduate course entitled "Biology of Women". The goals of the service learning projects were: 1) to provide students with the opportunity to consider issues pertaining to human biology in real-world settings; 2) to foster student engagement with the community; and…

Using the tools of corpus linguistics, genre analysts are now able to easily identify the common linguistic features of the moves and strategies of genres. Such analyses produce large amounts of linguistic data which must be presented to language learners in a meaningful context. One proposed method of doing so is by hyperlinking the data to form…

The relative difficulty of the seven test-wiseness skills measured by the Gibb Experimental Test of Testwiseness, a measure of cue-using skills, was studied. Participants were 243 undergraduates from 3 universities, 79% of whom were Caucasian. Participants reported a mean grade point average of 3.0 on a 4-point scale. Results suggest that some of…

The letter format, whether on paper or on computers, fosters student collaboration and a virtual community. Letters have real audiences, even when those audiences are fictional, as in epistolary novels and imaginative writing assignments. Most adult, non-traditional students (such as those at Tidewater Community College in Virginia) know that…

A study examined a pilot program, begun by the State of West Virginia, offering fully accredited first and second year core college courses via satellite television to state residents who either had not attended college or who had "stopped out" of academic studies for a period of time. The study explored a course based on CMM 103,…

Most instructors today feel that using computers in classrooms to create electronic forums automatically results in a more egalitarian setting, but technology can become an effective cloak for otherwise oppressive practices. These settings can potentially reinscribe dominant ideologies, stifling students rather than empowering them. These…

This study compared the effects of two methods of presenting instructive feedback during direct instruction on the learning of four preschool students with language delays and one with hearing impairments. These methods involved presenting two extra stimuli on all trials, and presenting the two extra stimuli separately on alternating trails. The…

This paper critiques the consumerization of schooling and knowledge, then looks at the ways in which Chicano students have lashed out against consumption in their education. From early childhood education to the university, U.S. schooling is ensconced in the capitalist notion of the marketplace. Within the marketplace of schools, the curriculum is…

According to author David Roochnik, the "tragedy of logos" refers to the condition of having a "logos" (meaning a view of the rational structure of the world) and colliding with its limits and limitations. The tragedy of logos arises when some event or experience shows that things are otherwise, because tragedy entails the…

This case study describes a collaborative effort among 10 campuses of the State University of New York (SUNY) to establish a shared distance learning network in western New York state. Participating campuses, led by SUNY Brockport, made a proposal to the SUNY system Office of Educational Technology to form WESTNET, a distance learning network that…