Several months after having completed an introductory economics course, most students are no better able to answer simple economic questions than students who never took the course. The problem seems to be that principles courses try to teach students far too much, with the result that everything goes by in a blur. The good news is that a…

As online research has become an increasingly standard activity for middle school and high school students, Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org) has simultaneously emerged as the bane of many teachers who include research-focused assignments in their courses. An online encyclopedia that allows anyone to edit its entries, Wikipedia has educators…

The author has been tutoring and teaching writing for fifteen years, but has discovered that few people outside of academia know what it is that she does. Despite the rise in composition graduate programs and the improving market for composition specialists, even within the university, faculty from other disciplines frequently have vague notions…

Discussions of English department identity and mission more often center on the undergraduate major curriculum than on classes for general-studies and other non-major students. In such courses, though, educators have an opportunity to touch the intellectual lives of far more people than they do in courses for majors. The author argues in this…

A phonographic study of students' experience of oral presentations in an open learning theology programme constituted three contrasting conceptions of oral presentations--as transmission of ideas; as a test of students' understanding of what they were studying; and as a position to be argued. Each of these conceptions represented a combination of…

In April 2003, some standards regarding accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International changed. Under the 2003 standards, students had to demonstrate learning achievement; thus, the focus shifted from what teachers taught to what students learned. Survey data indicates that although progress has…

Every day students are able to discuss complex ideas relatively easily in spontaneous conversation, yet when they attempt to express complex ideas in a written paper, students often experience great difficulty. The features of face-to-face conversation and of written communication differ in a number of respects. This study examines student's…

Throughout the decades, writing has been recognized as a process that helps learners to think more deeply about ideas and information they encounter through reading, listening, viewing, and physically experiencing the world around them. "Discovery writing," the type of writing over which students have some control of the format, topic, purpose,…

The well-planned writing workshop is an effective tool for expanding the mathematical discourse of students and helping them become more skillful writers in the discipline. This article reviews a step-by-step process for conducting a workshop and details different reader response strategies. It also offers suggestions for various types of…

Student learning assessment has become one of the central issues of public policy and accountability in higher education. Since the mid-1980s, a number of federal and state commissions and policy organizations have emphasized the importance of assessment for a variety of institutional practices, including student retention, graduation rates, and…

This article introduces an activity based on Standard 12 of the "Standards for Technological Literacy" that will help students develop good writing skills. It also describes the elements of a writing prompt and of a rubric, the advantages of using rubrics, and the writing development process itself. It provides an activity through which students…

Many students occupy a minimal space between the profession of composition studies and larger social and institutional constructions of composition, writing, and literacy. For most people outside the field, writing is viewed as a set of skills, rather than a substantive area of study. If students would only learn the rules--and if composition…

Hispanic Heritage Month, celebrated September 15th through October 15th, is a great opportunity to kick off a whole year of cultural discovery. This article presents 25 great ideas for Hispanic heritage. These 25 fresh ideas--from Aztec math to Carnaval masks--are easy to put together, and they offer students the chance to celebrate their own…

Peter Beidler reflects in this essay upon his experiences with his first year students following the events of 9-11. When the class met, still numb with the horror of events, Beidler and his apprentice teacher devised a different kind of exercise for the class. Having taken fifteen minutes to talk about the attacks with students, the author passed…

Students enrolled in composition classes may provide the answer to the dilemma of coming up with a writing topic: work--the "four letter word." Most, if not all, students have already become part of the labor force. The theme of "work" is naturally successful because it centers around a topic students know well, something that…