Discusses the uses of teaching portfolios, collections of documents, and reflections designed to assist both administrators and teachers to determine the scope and quality of teacher performance; and reviews pros and cons in their use. Suggests methods for developing portfolios and briefly describes successful portfolio projects. (MAB)

If developmental studies programs are to successfully enhance affective and cognitive development in a non-competitive, supportive setting, they must abandon traditional A to F grading in favor of a descriptive, personalized feedback system that helps the student make intelligent decisions concerning his/her academic future. Indeed, research…

Testing materials for high school students whose reading is below grade level might not be age-appropriate or sufficiently motivating. The first step in finding appropriate material would be to talk with the student to learn his or her interests. To find age-appropriate material the author searched Internet resources and then used Microsoft Word…

Argues that teachers should be encouraged to use not just pencil-and-paper tests but also observations, interviews, and even students' journals to gather information on which to base their evaluations. (PK)

Instead of accepting the mechanical approach that often characterizes individualized instruction programs, teachers should acquire personal knowledge about each student by spending structured but informal time with him/her. Personalized teaching can evolve from having individual students read in an informal setting with no set achievement…

Unobtrusive measures are recommended as a means of assessing educational outcomes of colleges. Such measures can counteract the response bias which is common in questionnaires and interviews. Outcomes researchers are, in fact, asked to supplement standard measures with unobtrusive measures. Interesting data may result from observation of students'…

Teacher education programs inadequately prepare teachers to teach students to participate in the many forms of cooperation which are inherent in life. Although teachers have the responsibility of helping students learn how to live and be productive in social groups, students in colleges of education are not usually trained to oversee and grade…

Outlines the development of Plato, a unified computer system linking terminals to a central educational network; critically reviews Plato's new Homelink system which provides access to 273 games and lessons; and discusses its present capabilities and possible future improvements to make Homelink attractive to home users interested in educational…

Education should not be thought of as being confined within traditional, formal education, but as embracing all learning processes and activities. Formal and informal systems of learning have specific roles to play within the educational process, while maintaining close cooperative linkages with each other. In other words, education is a lifelong…