Like many states, Minnesota has incurred large budget deficits during the past two years. Those deficits have, in turn, led to changes in a number of areas of state government, particularly higher education. Faculty have incurred pay freezes and layoffs, programs have closed, and tuition increased. Campuses within the MnSCU system have been…

There are a multitude of diverse technologies available for integration in the college classroom, but considering how to implement these initiatives can be overwhelming to the instructor. The adaptation of this technology is often very simple and involves little more than the Internet and basic word processing skills. A review of the multimedia…

This research project is the third in a series of research projects conducted for the purpose of assisting rural school principals create comprehensive first-year teacher induction programs. This project promotes the use of comprehensive teacher induction programs that meet both the needs of school principals, but also the social, personal, and…

Military colleges and service academies are a small and unique subset of the U.S. schools offering undergraduate degrees. With missions of preparing young men and women for serving and leading in perilous circumstances, what lessons, regarding developing leadership skills in young people, can be transferred to traditional schools? This paper…

It is not enough to be great at sharing information in a large classroom setting. To be an effective teacher you must be able to meaningfully engage your students with their peers and with the content. And you must do this regardless of class size or content. The issues of teaching effectively in large classroom settings have presented ongoing…

A paucity of published literature exists related to the use of panel discussion as a teaching strategy. This article describes the panel discussion, the underpinnings of constructivism and the use of panel discussion to create a constructivist classroom environment. Details of planning, evaluating, and challenges of a panel discussion are also…

The purpose of this research was to survey new and aspiring teachers from Northern State University in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and ask them to identify a set of school traits that they believe are most important when they first seek employment in new schools as teachers upon graduating from college. The participants were forty-three new and…

This paper presents a peer-based financial planning and education program as a strategy to address the lack of financial literacy among college students and provide an experiential learning opportunity for students majoring in financial planning or other financial services-related disciplines. Benefits of such programs to campus communities are…

Cloze testing is a widely-used procedure to test learners' reading comprehension in learning a language, but little is known if it can really improve learners' reading comprehension skills. This paper attempts to seek answers to this question by comparing the cloze test scores of two groups of students (Experimental versus Control) undertaking…

A Geological Perspective is a general education survey course for non-science majors at a large southwestern research extensive university. The class has traditionally served 600 students per semester in four 150-student lectures taught by faculty, and accompanied by optional weekly study groups run by graduate teaching assistants. We radically…

This study aimed to seek the cause of male students' dropout rate at the primary level of F.R. Peshawar. The main objectives of the study were: 1) to study the teacher problems and attitudes of the dropouts, 2) to determine the factors that cause dropouts, 3) to study the government's strategy of dropouts, and 4) to provide suggestions to overcome…

Universities have long used standardized American College Tests (ACT), Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT), and high school Grade Point Averages (HS GPA) for academic admission requirements. The current study of 127 minority college students in a Historically Black University in South Texas assesses an alternative measure, the Non-Cognitive…

In the past, the African female child had always been denied formal education due to various cultural and social prejudices. Distance education has been employed by numerous women, who had earlier thus been deprived, to bridge the educational gap between males and females in the country. These are mature females, of which the majority (54%) are…

A review of the literature reveals that although the teaching of critical thinking skills is a significant aim of post-secondary pedagogy, much ambiguity exists regarding the topic. In fact, due to the lack of faculty familiarity with the concept compounded by student resistance to put forth the intellectual labor to take charge of their own…

Economic and market globalization in the United States has engendered a multicultural learning environment that challenges both faculty and students. Diversity in the classroom is further complicated by nonverbal communication, which impacts on students' attitudes toward faculty members. Because today's classrooms are changing and undergoing rapid…