Many universities positively impact student retention rates by aligning state competencies and undergraduate coursework with specific learning outcomes known to contribute to success. Faculty from teaching and nursing conducted interdisciplinary focus group research to gather student perceptions concerning whether skills obtained through core…

Debates in forums such as "Educational Technology" and the National Academies of Science (National Research Council, 2011) emphasize the promise (and indeed recent successes) of digital game-based learning programs, but also the need for research-driven approaches that carefully delineate learning goals. This article introduces one such…

This paper reports select findings from an institutional survey designed to support long-term strategic developments at a research-led institution in the UK. These developments include a revised Learning and Teaching Strategy that has at its core the promotion of a "cross-institutional culture of enquiry-based, independent learning". The…

The sociology of aging draws on a broad array of theoretical perspectives and social theories from several disciplines, but rarely has it developed its own theories or theoretical perspectives. We build on past work to further advance and empirically test a model of mental health framed in terms of structural theorizing and situated within the…

Children in grades one to four completed two sentence construction tasks: (a) Write one complete sentence about a topic prompt (sentence integrity, Study 1); and (b) Integrate two sentences into one complete sentence without changing meaning (sentence combining, Study 2). Most, but not all, children in first through fourth grade could write just…

Advanced technologies have made it possible for neuroscientists to make remarkable discoveries regarding how our brains learn. This research should provide new insights into the designs of learning environments. This essay is an attempt to suggest how the possibilities of neuroscience might be employed to meet contemporary educational demands,…

The authors report the results of a cross-class project involving sophomore-level students in an Operations Analysis (OA) class with junior-level students in an Operations Management (OM) class. The students formed virtual teams and developed a simulation model of a call center. The OM students provided the management expertise, while the OA…

This article describes some of the findings of an evaluation of a "cross-curricular" digital media arts project for Year 8 students at Lister Community School in the London Borough of Newham. The project was designed to provide opportunities for a thematic curriculum in which quality learning encompassing both independent and collaborative…

With the new European framework, as EAP lecturers in an engineering college, we are reappraising our teaching and the position of our courses. From the perspective of engineering education in the 21st century, we believe that EAP teaching can focus not only on language and communication needs, but also on developing critical thinking about science…

Discussions on learning in organizations are characterized by the diversity of perspectives involved and the variety of their disciplinary roots. This is an effort to identify the roots of some metaphors employed in this literature. It is argued that cross-metaphor conversations can contribute to the richness of discussions in the field. Some…

In today's competitive college market, "interdisciplinary studies" are a major selling point for colleges and universities. Yet, on closer examination, it is apparent that the academic structure and place of the majority of interdisciplinary programs, departments, and centers are not substantially different from the academic disciplines,…

The demand for a new workforce to meet the challenges of a global knowledge economy is rapidly increasing. As a special report in Business Week magazine observed last year: "The game is changing. It isn't just about math and science anymore. It's about creativity, imagination, and, above all, innovation." Most analysts studying the new global…

This article describes a brand-new liberal-arts university which promises a different approach to teaching. Quest University is the first private, nonprofit, secular college in Canada. It has attracted professors with stellar credentials. Of its 79 freshmen, most are graduates of the rigorous International Baccalaureate high-school program, and…

This article reports on a study of senior academics' views of their disciplinary and interdisciplinary affiliations. It questions the idea that academics have a firm and fixed disciplinary identity from which they then act and suggests that academic work in the contemporary university challenges and changes how individuals view their disciplinary…

The interdisciplinary survey inherits from more traditional survey courses the weaknesses embodied in the survey textbook. The standard textbook presentation gives students the impression that each figure's music, art, or literature is the product of the "spirit of the age." Well-chosen biographies temper that presentation by drawing attention to…