In the rapidly changing world of higher education, innovative approaches to teaching adults are needed to drive instructional practices for helping to prepare the professionals of the future. The papers collected in "Innovations in Teaching Adults" were originally presented at a conference at City University of Seattle. The authors of…

This essay describes Louisiana State University's search for an alternative to available placement protocols. Under the leadership of Les Perelman at MIT, LSU collaborated with four universities to develop iMOAT, a program for administering online assessments of student writing. This essay focuses on LSU's On-line Challenge, which developed from…

A seismic economic shift has changed the rules by which Americans strive to get ahead in society. Hard work, once the bedrock of opportunity, is no longer sufficient in and of itself to ensure individual prosperity and security for either individuals or the larger community. The consequence of this new economy is the need to educate students in…

Student academic performance is of major interest to all stakeholders of higher education institutions. This study questions whether or not statistical analysis of information that is readily available in most universities' official records system can be used to predict overall academic success. In particular, this study is an attempt to…

The popularity and desirability of English language education has become somewhat unbeatable in Taiwan. This article seeks to understand the multiple threads of reasoning systems that come together to constitute and sustain the desirability of English learning. It conceptualizes that language education is more than teaching and learning a…

In this article, the author describes a cross-disciplinary minor that combines elements of business, communication, and the liberal arts. The BCLA Minor enhances employment opportunities and cultural awareness for students with majors in the Colleges of Business and Economics, Fine Arts and Communication, and Liberal Arts by integrating the…

We present our experience, spanning more than 10 years of teaching a course on "ethics and engineering" for a group of MSc programmes in applied sciences at Delft University of Technology. The course is taught by a team of teachers from the faculty of Applied Sciences and from the department of Philosophy of the Faculty of Technology,…

The author advocates for less, rather than more, research on alternative medicine. From a historical perspective, there is little newsworthy about public infatuation with what Bausell terms pseudomedicine. What is new is the role of institutions such as the National Institutes of Health, who now awards both research and educational grants in…

"Cultural literacy" has been hotly debated ever since E.D. Hirsch Jr.'s best seller of that name injected the desideratum into the culture wars in 1987. Today religious illiteracy is at least as pervasive as cultural illiteracy, and certainly more dangerous. Religious illiteracy is more dangerous because religion is the most volatile…

The Common Core State (or other rigorous) Standards (CCSS) being implemented by states across the nation are prompting school leaders and teachers to seek ways to move the standards into classroom instruction, assignments and assessments. Schools wanting to ensure that student work meets grade-level standards are using differentiated instructional…

The end of 7th grade provides an important moment to assess how prepared California's students are to succeed in the more advanced math curriculum that starts with algebra. At a minimum, all California students are required to successfully pass Algebra I in order to receive a high school diploma. But Algebra I also functions as the gateway to more…

A growing number of educators around the country are turning to technology and different teaching and learning approaches to give students personalized learning experiences that mirror the customized experiences they take for granted outside of school. To meet students' individual needs, they are putting in place 1-to-1 computing programs and…

What the author explores in this essay is not so much the "whether" of general science education, but the "why." What exactly constitutes good science education, and how can one recognize when students have received it? Once this question has been answered, the answer to the "what" question--the actual content of the curriculum--is relatively easy…

Astronomy was a required subject in the first American secondary level schools, the academies of the 18th century. When these were supplanted a century later by public high schools, astronomy still was often required, subsumed into courses of Natural Philosophy. Reasons given at that time to support astronomy as a part of general education include…

The crisis in higher education is about more than money. It is about what one has been paying for, paying for dearly. The public, even in these hard times, supports higher education with its tax dollars. And families make huge sacrifices to send their sons and daughters to college. They deserve in return higher education that provides real…