In this essay, the authors argue that linked-course learning communities serve students at nonresidential metropolitan public universities by increasing their academic achievement, reducing their attrition, and engaging them in the project of public education. They use a winter 2004 research project to argue that linked courses create supportive…

Presents a model of an integrated psychology course for teacher education programs that combines cognitive, behavioral, and affective components. Follow-up indicated that students taking the course developed more confidence in their teaching role, greater understanding of psychological concepts, and had high levels of class participation. (CS)

Compares Organizing Principle, multi-syllabus, and modular approaches to second language course design and suggests a modular course design that offers the greatest flexibility for both the instructor and for future course planning by allowing the instructor to link various elements of this approach according to methodology and student needs.…

This Practice Guide is the third in a series of Institute of Education Sciences (IES) guides in education. Much of teaching is about helping students master new knowledge and skills and then helping students not to forget what they have learned. The recommendations in this practice guide are intended to provide teachers with specific strategies…

Besides distance education, hybrid courses, and course enhancement, what else can you do with your course management system? Hampden-Sydney College has been stretching its basic level Blackboard system to fill a variety of needs. This presentation will start with a demonstration to showcase some of these uses such as engaging incoming freshmen…

In this article, the authors introduce 3 different course formats for teaching management consulting at the university. On the basis of data from self-evaluation questionnaires from 159 students, the authors analyze effectiveness of these course designs in raising the self-confidence of participants to cope with the kind of tasks typically faced…

How could we design course programmes in a teachers' learning community context? Is it possible to conceive a concrete and appropriate course model? And if so, how could we assess the effectiveness of such a course model in such a complex learning situation? In this paper, a model implementation of technology-based courses is presented. The model…

A limited approach to team teaching at the college level is described and assessed. Two instructors with solo assignments collaborated to teach a single instructional unit across separate sections of an interdisciplinary course. The experience demonstrated that small-scale joint teaching can have significant advantages while avoiding the practical…

This third in a series of edited transcripts based on a conference at Utah State University describes Merrill's Component Design Theory (CDT) and compares it to his earlier Component Display Theory. Topics discussed include concept structures, knowledge acquisition, components of an instructional design system, and a new CDT matrix. (10…

This article reports on the use of the House of Quality to facilitate the design of a required operations management course in an MBA program. The House of Quality is a relatively new approach that is used in product or service design and total quality management. The faculty identified the decision issues it felt would be pertinent to the design…

A course evaluation method is described in which the adoption of a desirable change is integral to the process of evaluation designed to motivate teachers, students, and other course organizers to improve and consequently change the structure, content, and conduct of the course when necessary. The course illustrated leads to a Postgraduate…

Describes a group-based mastery learning program emphasizing mandatory passing of an examination at the end of each unit. A student has four chances to earn a grade of 85 percent on each examination. Reports results for three semesters and includes evaluations from students and the instructor. Eight references are listed. (YP)

Differences in educational practice and culture of a British distance university and Australian traditional university are the basis for analysis of curriculum development methods. It is proposed that, although generally individual faculty design new courses, there are good reasons (efficiency, cohesiveness, professional development, academic…

In this article, the author examines the added value of strengths-based interventions in response to her college president's challenge that an educator should not be simply out for a talk in teaching. She redesigned her dissertation experiment to measure the impact of strengths-based teaching in two classrooms of Introduction to Public Speaking…

Varied aspects of Swedish Distance Education are described in this report, which is based primarily on an evaluation that analyzed student background, study problems, student use of and attitudes towards distance aids, study results, and the psychological consequences of distance education. Emphasis is on an investigation of distance education…