The authors are faculty in history and English, respectively, at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. What their students want and need, and what the institution's role in the community should be, remain open questions, with policy implications at the departmental, college, city, and even national level. Indeed, President Obama…

How can writing instructors prepare students for informed and engaged civic discourse when opportunities for such discourse are seemingly limited and ineffective? This essay examines this question by reporting on a case study that explored civic discourse and civic participation at the local level of government. The aims of the case study were to…

This dissertation is an action research study examining the use of technology to encourage critical thinking and digital literacy in a community college history class. The students are responsible for researching course material and teaching the class. They then use a wiki to contribute to and edit an interactive, online textbook that has been…

In this essay, the author describes her own attempt at incorporating Web 2.0 technology into her teaching: a wiki project that she used in her English as a second language (ESL) composition course. The theme she traces throughout the rest of this essay is the wiki's ability (or inability) to make "connections" of various kinds. Like any text, the…

This article reports findings from two studies assessing reading compliance among first semester freshmen at a small Midwestern two-year liberal arts university. The first study assessed reading compliance of students enrolled in two sections of First Year Seminar, finding that 46% of students reported that they read assignments, yet only 55% of…

The purpose of this study was to explore the attitudes, beliefs, and practices of community college professors regarding education for sustainable development (ESD). In-depth interviews with 14 professors from different disciplines were conducted. The participants taught at Miami Dade College, Florida, a Talloires Declaration signatory since 2006,…

An assignment to write a dialogue differs little from that of writing a traditional essay. Writing a dialogue requires students to combine traditional academic requirements--such as information literacy, writing competency, and critical thinking--with a healthy dose of imagination, creativity, and individuality. In practice, assignments to write…

The purpose of this study was to explore the responsibilities of the instructor in an English composition course at a community college. In particular, the study explored the role of the instructor in implementing required department curriculum and learning objectives into the course plan. The study was conducted through multiple case study.…

In this article, the author describes a text preview assignment that she gave to her students. Students completing the text preview assignment use multimodal design, introducing classmates to texts in ways that motivate and inform their reading. She discusses using previews to set the stage for reading and discussion and to deepen personal…

This article considers the emotional and psychological complexities of responding to personal narratives when the focus is war. The author teaches at a community college and she always begins her semester with a narrative assignment for the usual reasons: students write better when they write what they know; teachers should scaffold writing…

This action research study is the culmination of several action cycles investigating cognitive information processing and learning strategies based on students approach to learning theory and assessing students' meta-cognitive learning, motivation, and reflective development suggestive of deep learning. The study introduces a reading…

How students respond to teacher-written commentary has been an under-researched topic, and the existing literature in L2 studies is contradictory. The present study analyzes the critical and positive commentary, mitigated and unmitigated, written by two community-college, first-year composition teachers on two drafts of two writing assignments…

At the beginning of each school year, the Languages and Humanities Division at Chandler-Gilbert Community College (CGCC) meets to discuss first-year composition matters. Faculty leave the workshop renewed by the collaboration and buoyed by the promise and potential of a new semester. Yet, when classes actually begin, faculty may find that they are…

By analysing the national data from the Junior Survey of the Taiwan Higher Education Dataset, this study identified significant variables influencing the educational aspirations of aboriginal students at technical and vocational institutions. The study shows that several variables are predictive of the educational aspirations of aboriginal…

In this article, the author talks about the college writing center, which is a place of political confrontation, where cultural issues involving dialect and values are probed, contested, and negotiated. He suggests a post-process approach to composition--one that ushers writers into a world of exploration and social engagement--one that transcends…