This study provides a greater understanding of which factors influence the effectiveness of service learning projects at improving graduate students' professional skills. Data for this study was gathered from students in eight Master of Public Administration (MPA) courses taught during two semesters at a large state university. Younger students…

University education in the United States has become an increasingly global environment. In the classrooms of a modern university students and teachers from literally all corners of the world come together and reshape the face of higher education. Without a doubt the multicultural classroom of the 21st century necessitates fresh pedagogical…

Personal response systems (PRS)--also called student response systems (SRS), or more commonly, "clickers"--can be a catalyst for transformation of a learning environment from one of silence to one rich in dialogue and interaction. But how is this transformation achieved? In this paper, we present three case studies of instructors who use PRS in…

The new majority of faculty in today's colleges and universities are part-time, yet sizable gaps exist in the research on their needs, interests, and experiences. Further, the peer-reviewed scholarship is largely quantitative. Principally, it focuses on the utility of the adjunct work force, comparisons between part-time and full-time faculty, and…

Several core competencies related to information literacy have been identified by the Association of College and Research Libraries. Students must learn to gather relevant information and communicate their findings effectively. The collaborative activity described here, which could easily be adapted for other disciplines, introduces first-semester…

Courses in a wide variety of disciplines emphasize that what we think important, and are therefore likely to remember, is not the result of the objective situation but rather the result of our individual biases and interpretations. This article presents a classroom exercise that aids students in grasping the interpretive nature of historical…

An analysis of teacher-student interactions leads to critical reflections of the assumptions underlying the pedagogical choices this professor makes in undergraduate classes. Using concepts of perception of credibility and politics of recognition, the teacher gains insight into the equity of her practices.

The present study investigated differences in the effectiveness of instructors from a variety of departments who taught the same course in both intensive and traditional formats within the same year, while controlling for many confounding variables. Results indicated that intensive courses did not significantly differ from traditional courses in…

Despite decades of successful implementation at the K-12 level, cooperative learning (CL) has been slow to catch on at the college level. Resistance by instructors and students alike has slowed its diffusion. Some resistance stems from poor experiences with CL, but potential adopters often fail to realize that effective CL rests on a set of…

Teachers have used many different techniques in efforts to augment engagement given the strong engagement-learning link. Teacher-student contact is one of the most effective tools for fostering engagement; however, some teachers find it hard to initiate contact in a way that seems natural. I present one method of initiating student-teacher…

This paper postulates that having students engage in albeit limited and flawed research is a more effective way of changing attitudes than lecture or discussion. A common goal of the introductory linguistics course is to instill healthy language attitudes, but there is little extant research on the pedagogy of linguistics indicating how this may…

Student teaching evaluations (STEs) are increasingly used in the process of determining promotion and tenure. While most research has focused on career consequences, there has been little inquiry into the remarks students write at the end of the evaluation form. The structure of the collection process, involving emotional arousal and anonymity in…

Tablet PCs have the potential to change the dynamics of classroom interaction through wireless communication coupled with pen-based computing technology that is suited for analyzing and solving engineering problems. This study focuses on how tablet PCs and wireless technology can be used during classroom instruction to create an Interactive…

The current quasi-experimental study compared two sections of a course, one that included diversity content and one that did not. The authors obtained pretest and posttest data on students' attitudes toward a number of different minority groups and on their levels of course content knowledge. The authors also examined two questions: first, whether…

Dozens and dozens of little deaths occur in college classrooms each day as teachers, mostly because of fear, steer themselves and their students away from what is alive and real and toward what is dead, safe, and boring. In this paper, I use a collection of stories to describe a practice that enlivens classroom dynamics that I call "Steering Into…