In January 2006 the Billings (Montana) Public Schools adopted a computer-assisted instruction (CAI) intervention aimed at helping students recover credits that they had attempted but had not attained. The author volunteered to teach the algebra component in his high school. Through the following seven semesters, he came to better understand the…

Across the United States, students are entering college with a need for improvement in basic mathematics and communication skills. In 2008, the Florida Legislature passed Senate Bill 1908 which changed the expectations for the senior year of high school for many students. Students who score within certain levels on the mandatory high school…

Stephen Prothero's "Religious Literacy" makes a strong case that minimal religious literacy is an essential requirement for contemporary U. S. citizens. He argues further that high schools and colleges should offer required courses in the study of religion in order to help students reach that baseline literacy. Beyond the general recommendation…

The CSU, Stanislaus, accounting program is providing a new course that meets the university-wide upper-division writing requirement and offers accounting students additional professional study. While a writing skills course is not unusual in a business program, few offer an alternative centered on the accounting body of knowledge. Undergraduate…

Learners inevitably enter adult technical training classrooms--indeed, in all classrooms--with different levels of expertise on the subject matter. When the diversity of expertise is wide and the course makes use of small group problem solving, instructors have a choice about how to group learners: they may distribute learners with greater…

The geology program at Clemson University has instituted a new, six-semester-long undergraduate research course sequence that requires student participation in ongoing departmental research projects from their sophomore through senior years. As a part of a university-wide initiative focusing on undergraduate research, termed Creative Inquiry at…

Do students really enroll in Introductory Geology because they think it is "rocks for jocks"? In this study, we examine the widely held assumption that students view geology as a qualitative and remedial option for fulfilling a general education requirement. We present the first quantitative characterization of a large number of…

The following study was conducted in a six-county geographical region and involved teachers from various high schools that taught classes which were involved in the subject area testing program. Each participant taught one of the four state-mandated subject area classes that are tested to determine achievement levels and accreditation ratings for…

The central purpose of this research was to assess student learning outcomes in the Algebra I credit recovery course offered at traditional schools in Louisiana and the Algebra I credit recovery course offered online by the Louisiana Virtual School (LVS). It was also conducted to assess the associations of gender, grade level, and socio-economic…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine the influence of self-esteem and selected demographic characteristics on academic achievement among students at the freshman level in the College of Agriculture at Louisiana State University. The sample of the study was all students at Louisiana State University enrolled in the Introduction to…

Using data from the 2005 NAEP High School Transcript Study, this paper examines the mathematics course-taking of rural high school students. Although several studies indicate rural high school students' mathematics achievement is comparable to that of students in non-rural high schools, the mathematics course-taking patterns of rural and non-rural…

Introducing the general education curriculum in a required first-year seminar can be challenging. However, it provides a great opportunity to influence students' perceptions. The results of this study indicate that doing so increases student appreciation for general education and increases student confidence in general education course selection.…

For many years computing in New Zealand schools was focused on teaching students how to use computers, and there was little opportunity for students to learn about programming and computer science as formal subjects. In this article we review a series of initiatives that occurred from 2007 to 2009 that led to programming and computer science being…

This paper studies the role and the importance of Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) education in Information Technology (IT) programs. The research included the students who attended an ICT4D course at NYiT Amman Campus in the academic years of 2006 to 2009. Data were collected through two questionnaires developed…

While research on barriers to full participation for those with learning and other disabilities has focused largely on structural and institutional obstacles to work and education (Swain, French, & Cameron, 2005; Jones, 1996; Watson, 2002), the recognition of disability as a social justice issue is gaining currency (Kraus, 2008). Expensive,…