It is imperative to identify the impact of technological advancements on the quality of student learning. This article reports first-year undergraduate students' perceptions of and experiences with a Web-based writing support program. Two research questions guided the study: (1) What is the nature of first-year students' interactions with…

Although past research indicates that giving brief quizzes, administered either regularly or randomly, may lead to improvement in students' performance on major exams, negligible research has targeted daily writing activities that require the processing of course information at a deeper level than might result from simply reading course materials…

For well over 25 years, critical thinking has been declared an educational ideal. However, though institutions are committed to teaching "critical thinking" (CT), there are numerous important questions that need careful treatment if this goal is to be met. First, the faculties must arrive at a shared understanding of what they mean by the phrase…

General education reform is one of the most difficult challenges facing higher education institutions because general education is embedded in organizational culture. This paper examines the reform of general education as a process of organizational change and illustrates how deeper, more sustainable reform may be achieved by integrating cultural…

Extending inquiry-based learning to allow students to develop their own questions and design and perform their own experiments can greatly enhance education. Students gain an appreciation of how knowledge is acquired and insights into evaluating data. Although easily applied to laboratory courses, the technique is also applicable to lecture…

The author argues that first-year students understand "writing" narrowly and that introductory writing courses should deepen that understanding. The article describes class projects designed to help students see themselves as authors (closely related to "authorities"), create a "community of dissensus," and raise awareness of ideology--their own…

Higher educational institutions face fundamental challenges as they adapt to increasingly competitive markets. This literature review provides a context on markets, failure, and turnarounds, and discusses the literature on the shift of the higher educational industry into competitive markets. The literature on turnarounds in the corporate…

Recently, a medium-sized public university's General Education Council implemented a faculty-driven course-embedded assessment process that allows for flexibility in teaching style and course content but still measures quality of student performance throughout the program. Information on implementation, reporting processes, data analyses, and how…

All members of the higher education community share the important goal of fostering college students' motivation to learn. Which contemporary constructs best explain students' motivation, however, is an issue of debate in this community. This article discusses motivational theory and research and draws implications for general education programs.

Working inductively from classroom research and guided by a Bakhtinian view of language, the author proposes a discourse-based theory of interdisciplinary connections. The article includes examples of four discursive resources individuals draw on to make interdisciplinary connections--content, propositions, ways of knowing, and classroom…

General education programs rely on students transferring learning from one context to another. This transfer cannot be taken for granted. Faculty must see individual courses as elements of a larger experience and focus on specific techniques promoting transfer. Classroom experiences serve to illustrate the elements of transfer that require…

This article draws on historical and philosophical lenses and interviews with students to question some fundamental tenets underlying the practice of freshman learning communities (FLCs): that they develop community and improve students' learning experiences. The article brings to the discourse of FLCs some critical questions regarding their value…

The purpose of this study of two undergraduate liberal arts core curricula was to answer the following questions: What was the impact on student humanitarian values of a traditional distribution general education core curriculum with a supplementary integrated intervention strategy that requires students to examine personal values and the values…

This paper discusses the method and results of an evaluation of general education mathematics courses. Students at the University of Louisville were surveyed in the first week of the Fall 2000 semester to determine their expectations for their mathematics course. Student grades were examined to determine how student expectations related to student…

Assessing common target outcome for a general education program is difficult in an undergraduate "cafeteria style" program because of the scope of courses and lack of uniformity in the students' choices, and the difficulties associated with tracking a large number of transfer students. The University of Central Florida used a course embedded…