Language of risk and causation pervades modern media sources. In response, statistical literacy is often framed as a critical means of understanding such discourse. At Michigan State University, several faculties have worked to create a new mathematics course, entitled Quantitative Literacy, to fulfill the University's general education…

The ability to integrate learning--to make connections across classes or even within a single class--is integral to students becoming better learners, and to growing their capacity to perform as civic actors. We discuss an upper-level Campaigns and Elections class in which the course structure and assignments were set up to encourage students to…

Assessment and evaluation practices within honors programs have attracted considerable attention within the honors academic community, e.g., the spring/summer 2006 volume of the "Journal of the National Collegiate Honors Council." Calls for carefully created and constructed assessment activities within honors programs have met with mixed…

This article details the aim, development, and implementation of the Chemistry-Genetics Course Collaborative (CGCC), a cotaught offering of a human genetics course with an honors introductory chemistry course. The CGCC was formed to fully integrate the two courses, along with the associated chemistry lab, to create an interdisciplinary scientific…

Using technology in teaching and learning finds a wide adoption in recent years. 63.3% of chief academic leaders surveyed by the Babson Survey Research Group confirm that online education is critical to their long-term strategy. Modern engagement pedagogies, such as digital gamification, hold a promise of shaping student experience. While course…

Using technology in teaching and learning finds a wide adoption in recent years. 63.3% of chief academic leaders surveyed by the Babson Survey Research Group confirm that online education is critical to their long-term strategy. Modern engagement pedagogies, such as digital gamification, hold a promise of shaping student experience. While course…

An important topic in writing research has been the use of cohesive features. Much of this research has focused on local and text cohesion. The few studies that have studied global cohesion have been restricted to first language writing. This study investigates the development of local, global, and text cohesion in the writing of 57 language (L2)…

This article isolates and observes the impact of peer readership on low-stakes reflective writing assignments in two large Introduction to Sociology classes. Through a comparative content analysis of over 2,000 private reflective journal entries and semipublic reflective blog posts, I find that both practices produce distinct forms of reflection.…

The Silent Socratic Dialogue (SSD) writing warm-up technique places college students in a dialogic setting in which they construct the texts that explore, inform, and challenge each other through a succession of questions and answers. It validates students' voices, ideas, and interactions as worthy of study while engaging them in the…

This article describes three service-learning projects implemented in three different ESL programs in the United States. Each description includes typical course goals, service-learning assignments, reflection activities, student learning outcomes, and pedagogical challenges. The first project was developing digital literacy through…

This essay is about the process of discovering and trying to help an exceptional student who was grappling with issues of real-life violence and incarceration and the desire to articulate their meaning to his life through writing. It describes how this student empowered himself to reflect on and deconstruct the meaning of his incarceration and how…

We present some key findings of a four-year, two-phase writing assessment project at Central Michigan University: Phase One (2002), a survey of faculty members (n=115) and subsequent focus groups (n=14) and Phase Two (2005), an evaluation of two samples of student writing (n=635 and 632). Major findings of Phase One reported here include the…

In large lecture courses, it can be challenging for instructors to address student misconceptions, supplement background knowledge, and identify ways to motivate the various interests of all students during the allotted class time. Instructors can harness instructional technology such as screencasts, recordings that capture audio narration along…

This paper describes writing assignments from a modern algebra course which were used to foster the development of proof-writing skills. Each assignment consists of proofs and mathematical work supposedly written by fictional characters, where the proofs are designed to illustrate common misconceptions, difficult points, and typical writing flaws.…

Describes two assignments that attempt to reconcile the history of minority high school and college students in Flint, Michigan. States that the first assignment is a profile paper--an interview of someone in the community. Explains that the second exercise encourages students to see and use their world and their words as text. (PA)