If someone had asked this author five years ago whether she would ever envision herself as a teacher leader, her answer would have been an emphatic "no." Her passion is for teaching and learning. She did not have the desire or the temperament to administrate others. However, as educational transformation began in her district and on her campus,…

Evidence suggests that experienced instructional designers often use heuristics and adapted models when engaged in the instructional design problem-solving process. This study used the Delphi technique to identify a core set of heuristics designers reported as being important to the success of the design process. The overarching purpose of the…

Assessment, or better stated, the assurance of student learning, has become a central issue in both the internal and the external evaluations of degree programs offered by colleges and universities. The continual importance of assurance of learning activities within institutions of higher education has generated a growing need to create empirical…

The assessment of general education is often approached through broad surveys or standardized instruments that fail to capture the learning goals most faculty members desire for this portion of the curriculum. The challenge in remedying this situation lies, first, in defining general education in meaningful ways that can be both articulated and…

The article introduces external quality assessment results of first cycle and second cycle study programmes renewed under the Human Resources Development Action Programme 2007-2013 priority direction 2 "Lifelong Learning" (hereinafter the "Programme") through the aspect of planning students' independent work. Problems faced…

In this article, I first take on the issue of standards and the degree to which they do or do not contribute to the improvement of language and literacy outcomes for children in multilingual societies. Then I consider the relation of standards to language and, finally, raise the vexed issue of content knowledge and its relation to standards, on…

In this paper, we present a step-by-step guide to implement a curricular alignment project, directed at professional development and student support, and developed in a higher education French as a second language department. We outline best practices and preliminary results from our experience and provide ways to adapt our experience to other…

Content standards have been identified in America as a solution to the declining rate of student success in the public education system. But content standards are not a "silver bullet," for a number of reasons. This chapter presents an intersegmental approach to vertical curriculum alignment that returns questions of student readiness to…

The "College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: State Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History" will soon be released. The C3 Framework was developed to serve two audiences: for states to upgrade their state social studies standards, and for…

Today's programs and delivery methods in continuing education for the adult student are evolving due to changing needs, competition, and new markets and technologies. The marketing infrastructure, including staffing, budgeting, and processes such as customer relationship marketing and market research, must be in alignment with changing needs.

Validity evidence based on test content is of essential importance in educational testing. One source for such evidence is an alignment study, which helps evaluate the congruence between tested objectives and those specified in the curriculum. However, the results of an alignment study do not always sufficiently capture the degree to which a test…

As states struggle with the notion of international competitiveness, the quality and rigor of academic content standards has come into question. While Ohio's content standards are well regarded, the state initiated a process to revise the standards and eventually joined with the majority of states in adopting a voluntary set of national…

Nationwide, community colleges struggle with how to improve the poor outcomes of students referred to developmental education. Based on a case study of an urban community college system, this paper sets forth an "opposing forces framework" to help diagnose the underlying issues that may thwart colleges' efforts to improve developmental outcomes.…

Given the differences in social, emotional, and physiological development among elementary, middle, and high school students, it should come as no surprise that collaborative spaces should be designed differently for each age group. The needs of younger students do not necessarily mirror those of their older peers. Architect and educator Peter…

In this paper we argue that both internal and external pressures and conditions urge contemporary higher education institutions to carefully think through their institutional profiles positions in domestic and global higher education contexts. We subsequently analyse strategic positioning from the strategic management literature and offer four…