As in many other fields of science and technology, college students in computer engineering do not come into full contact with the key ideas and challenges of their chosen discipline until the third year of their studies. This situation poses a problem in terms of keeping the students motivated as they labor through their foundational, basic…

"The First-Year Seminar: Designing, Implementing, and Assessing Courses to Support Student Learning and Success," a five-volume series, is designed to assist educators who are interested in launching a firstyear seminar or revamping an existing program. Each volume examines a different aspect of first-year seminar design or…

The "fingerpost" is that ubiquitous hand with one extended finger long seen in public places, accompanied by directions such as "to the ladies' toilets" or "exit this way." More recently, that same finger has been widely adopted in electronic media, for the purpose of leading people simply and intuitively to a…

As an open-access institution and a tribal college, Salish Kootenai College (SKC, Pablo, Montana) accepts all students who walk through the doors. Part of SKC's mission is to provide educational opportunities and access for students who are historically underrepresented in higher education. In recent years, national attention has focused on the…

The term "assessment" sends shivers down academic spines. For faculty, it signals marching orders from external parties who may or may not appreciate the subtle and not always quantifiable value of faculty efforts. For administrators, it means the dual challenge of recalibrating internal measures to meet external mandates but also…

Purpose: For many years, the Lupton Library offered a traditional library introduction class to first year students participating in the Freshman Seminar Program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. In 2007, the library applied for and received a campus grant to purchase thirty iPod Touches, along with accompanying hardware and software.…

Last fall the author taught two sections of a first-year seminar on activism and volunteering, called "Raise a Fist, Lend a Hand: Activism and Volunteerism at the Dawn of the 21st Century," at a small liberal-arts college in the Midwest. She had noted in the course description that a community-service requirement was included, so she…

As part of a campus-wide, externally funded project to increase performance in, enthusiasm for, and retention within STEM disciplines, we developed an interdisciplinary, team-taught first-year seminar course. The construction and delivery of this course was designed to show the relevance of selected general chemistry topics such as matter and…

In this article, the author reflects on his experiences as a participant to the first CONNECT First-Year Writing Group seminar. It describes the development of collegiality and the positive results of professional synergy within a group of English professors from three community colleges, a state college, a university, and a maritime academy in…

We observe that recruitment efforts aimed at alleviating the shortage of skilled workforce in computer engineering must be augmented with strategies for retaining and motivating the students after they have enrolled in our educational programmes. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, we have taken a first step in this direction by…

Concern in the United States for adequate public school education in mathematics dates back at least to the response to Sputnik in 1957, but at that time focused on preparing a cadre of students for quantitatively demanding careers in science and engineering. More recently, however, there has been increasing appreciation of the value of broadly…

Increased focus on assessment of student learning, within college classrooms, has lead many professors to routinely employ classroom assessment techniques as a means to make adjustments in teaching during the instructional process. This article describes a technique, Talking Drawings, which was developed by a high school teacher as a teaching…

Students are faced with numerous challenges as they reach the high school level. Among these issues are declining levels of academic efficacy, expectancy, confidence, positive academic behaviors, and motivation. Intentionally developing existing strengths or talents may reverse these negative trends and equip students with the skills necessary to…

Although any new undertaking is exciting because of the opportunities it may bring, the transition to college life also brings new pressures and uncertainties. From the shelter of home, young people emerge into a new culture, with a new environment for success. Here they are their own masters, often far from the vigilance of parents and the…

A group of five graduate students and a faculty mentor used the cultural popularity of forensics to develop a first-year undergraduate seminar. This course fulfilled two main objectives: First, the graduate student instructors developed professionally through a two-year process of creating, instructing, and revising a course. Second, a variety of…