In a college world affairs course, the teacher acted as foreign policy/national security advisor to the president and assigned students as staff members for different geographic regions. Students briefed him daily, first on current events, then on specific issues. Students enjoyed the challenging assignments, intensive questioning, and policy…

A Kean College (New Jersey) program in English as a Second Language (ESL) designed to ease students' transition to mainstream classes focuses on reinforcing existing English skills, encouraging interaction between limited-English-speaking and native-speaking students, providing academic support, encouraging confidence, and helping teachers modify…

College students are often reluctant to use libraries, despite the resources available there. Teachers assigning projects that require research might also require conferences with students in the library, possibly in small groups, to provide assistance in preliminary stages. This helps students locate and use varied information sources and…

A teaching portfolio is to document, over an extended period of time, the full range of one's abilities as a college teacher. Seven dimensions can be documented: what is taught; how it is taught; changes in teaching and course activities; academic rigor; student attitudes; skill development efforts; peer assessment. (MSE)

Although the benefits of student-centered or collaborative learning are real, the arguments made for them often appear ideological rather than pedagogical and rather than encouraging diversity, require revision of fundamental aspects of cognitive personality. What is needed is a broad view of the variety in teachers' and students' intellectual…

A sociology course on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and its societal context, taught at California State University, Long Beach, is described. The background, content, organization, administrative and emotional demands, teaching methods (including input from patients with AIDS), texts, and impact of the interdisciplinary course are…

Even minor changes in the college curriculum, especially across disciplinary boundaries, can have profound effects on the organization of the institution and roles of faculty and administrators. A typology of eight kinds of campus organizational change outlines the implications of each, and a checklist of considerations surrounding change is…

A discussion of the Socratic method for college-level teaching looks at the three primary components of the method (systematic questioning, inductive reasoning, and universal definitions) and several additional relevant elements, including the testing of hypotheses and use of background information. One teacher's classroom techniques are…

A course taught at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College brings together all 13 faculty and a third of the student population in an interdisciplinary effort to address the theme of conflict. The course is administered by a student and a faculty member and exemplifies the difficulties of collaborative administration. (MSE)

An interdisciplinary business administration course taught at Kent State University (Ohio) uses literature to teach bureaucratic structure, based on the idea that, for business students, studying literature is an opportunity to develop alternative methods of perceiving and managing human resources. The curriculum is described and the reading list…

It is proposed that the college core curriculum should provide students with the background to understand magazines and books read by culturally literate, college graduates. As an example, Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" is examined for important themes, language, and historical and cultural figures. (MSE)

A study of 55 recipients of the University of California, Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award found most felt the award had little effect on their careers and provided little incentive to improve teaching. Four recommendations for making the reward structure more effective in motivating teachers to improve instruction are offered. (MSE)

A course taught at Pacific Lutheran University (Washington) encourages students to transform inner creative energy into an expression of their changing, developing identities. Students make shrines to their childhoods, create models, or costume themselves to express their inner lives. (MSE)

A University of Texas undergraduate course on twentieth century poetry uses conferencing on computers within the classroom for discussion. The technique encourages participation, promotes spontaneity, allows revision, neutralizes gender bias, and improves student writing. A variety of computer programs are available, and the method can be adapted…

The strength of collaborative learning is in involving students in intellectual problem solving. In a college-level U.S. literature course at East Stroudsburg University (Pennsylvania), traditional lecture and Socratic questioning establishes background; and collaborative learning is used to help students examine the central questions about the…