Advocates for teacher education reform are calling for university faculty to become more in tune with conditions in the schools. Linda Darling-Hammond (2006), for one, says that "the enterprise of teacher education must venture out further and further from the university and engage ever more closely with schools in a mutual transformation agenda,…

Few terms in the lexicon of higher education today are invoked more frequently, and in more varied ways, than "engagement". The phrase "student engagement" has come to refer to how "involved" or "interested" students appear to be in their learning and how "connected" they are to their classes, their institutions, and each other. As measured by…

Accreditors, speakers at assessment conferences, and campus leaders all decry the fact that too few faculty are closing the loop--that is, studying assessment findings to see what improvements might be suggested and taking the appropriate steps to make them. This is difficult enough with locally developed measures; adding the need to interpret…

People are inundated with technology on campuses and in their lives. Students are increasingly technology savvy, expecting faculty and administrators to function comfortably within the digital world. They have responded by using technology more and more in teaching and learning. In this article, the author focuses on one such use--student…

Comic books and graphic novels are one of the newest fully fledged art forms, a vibrant, hybrid medium birthed in America and brimming with all the wildly experimental vigor of youth. Traditionally associated with children's narratives and the object of condescension and ridicule, they have only recently captured academic attention. What is…

Higher education is simply not making substantial progress in addressing its most significant challenges: educating an increasingly diverse body of students while containing the cost that is putting postsecondary education beyond the reach of a growing percentage of the world's population. Tweaking long-standing strategies to achieve incremental…

Defined as the systematic study of teaching and learning made public, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has drawn increasing attention from faculty members and institutions in recent years, perhaps as a response to rising demands for accountability and evidence-based teaching practices. However, the process of setting up a SoTL project,…

Many assessment experts believe it is essential to develop faculty-driven assessment tools in order to engage faculty in meaningful assessment that can improve student learning. Tennessee Technological University (TTU) has been involved in an extended effort during the last ten years to develop, refine, and nationally disseminate an instrument to…

"Cross-disciplinary" has become a buzzword in academia. Here the authors offer a student-based perspective on the benefits of cross-disciplinary discussion, based on their experience in New York University's Graduate Forum. Founded ten years ago by Catharine Stimpson, then dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Science (GSAS), the forum brings…

Although virtually all universities have accounting systems that track every dollar in accordance with the accounting rules required by auditors, these systems are not adequate to inform their leaders or the public about the profit and loss, productivity, or efficiency of their activities. Instead, they obscure the different revenue sources on…

In 2007, the College Board's Community College Advisory Panel--a group of college presidents that advises the organization's membership on community college issues--asked these authors to write a paper describing effective remedial education programs. They never wrote the paper. The problem was not the lack of dedicated faculty and staff working…

Accrediting agencies, legislators, pundits, and even higher educational professionals have become enamored with applying the language of continuous improvement to learning outcomes. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges specifically uses the term "continuing improvement" in Core Standard 2.5, one of its…

A recent study by the Higher Education Research Institute noted that virtually all faculty report that developing students' ability to think critically is a very important or essential goal of undergraduate education, as is promoting students' ability to write effectively. But even if faculty concur that students should develop critical thinking…

It's no secret that American higher education is facing a daunting set of challenges. While public opinion surveys show that the public thinks a collegiate education is more important than ever, states across the country are reducing financial resources for their public colleges and universities--which are, in turn, eliminating programs or raising…

Six years ago, a small group of liberal arts colleges in New England (Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Middlebury, Smith, Trinity and Wellesley) and their regional accreditor (the New England Association of Schools and Colleges) formed the New England Consortium on Assessment and Student Learning (NECASL). The general goals of this collaboration were to…