Recommends pluralistic general education programming to accommodate diversity in faculty orientations, values, and perceptions of knowledge; and disparity in students' academic ability, values, and preferred learning styles. Suggests a multi-track general education model emphasizing different, but equally demanding, educational experiences for…

"Music Video 454," a course surveying the history, business, and aesthetics of the most important force in both music and television, is described. The instructors teach students to analyze videos--aesthetically and sociologically, and hope to enhance their career prospects. (MLW)

Steps to improving introductory courses to keep the appropriate liberal education emphasis include: teach less, restructure testing, relate course content to problems in the outside world, pursue ethical issues, balance facts with other forms of knowledge, teach the arts of discussion and critical thinking, and help students develop wisdom. (MSE)

Describes the use of andragogy (a process for helping students become self-directed learners) in an oral communications course. Reveals that the use of performance contracts increased students' involvement in planning, conducting, and evaluating their own learning. Reviews indicators of the strategy's success. (DMM)

Service-learning is used least often in the fields at the core of the liberal arts and sciences, in part because of the perceived incompatibility between the purposes of a liberal education and the dynamics of service-learning. When we understand better the purposes and values of liberal learning, we will find service-learning a useful pedagogy…

Argues that a controlled study of Supplemental Instruction (SI) sessions in college chemistry showed that participants benefited from SI sessions to an extent that cannot be explained only by their higher levels of motivation. Reports that SI includes services such as one-on-one, drop-in, and group tutoring. (Contains 11 references.) (AUTH/NB)

Presents a case study of two classes that created a community of learners across the expanse of the North American continent and the Pacific Ocean. Participants in the Russell Scholars Program of the University of Southern Maine and the Rainbow Advantage Program of the University of Hawaii at Manoa collaborated on a traveling art exhibit entitled…

Argues that the recent controversy over the effect of the minimum wage on employment offers an opportunity for teaching introductory economics. Examines eight textbooks to determine topic coverage but finds little consensus. Describes how minimum wage effects should be taught. (RLH)

An introductory statistics course is a common requirement for undergraduate economics, psychology, and sociology majors. An approach to statistics that involves the effort to encourage habits of systematic, critical quantitative thinking through focusing on descriptive statistics is discussed. (MLW)

The value of an interdisciplinary approach in a liberal arts education is stressed, and such a program at San Francisco State University (California) is profiled. The program helps students understand the reciprocal relationship between scientific development and cultural values. One course, "The Visual World of Science and Art," is…

A well-designed college course syllabus can serve a variety of purposes: as an agreement between teacher and student; as a device for communicating intent, seriousness, and expectations; as an overall plan of action for the course; and as a cognitive map of the course to share with students. This article identifies the major components of a good…

Global higher education can no longer be viewed as secondary; it is essential for educating graduates to cope creatively with the modern world. Second languages are central to the global curriculum; study abroad is desirable. In addition, global education involves a broader way of thinking, not merely a certain content. (MSE)

College catalogs present a snapshot of the institution's curriculum perspectives at a given point in time and can help document changes over time. For curriculum evaluation, college catalog analysis is best used in conjunction with other methods of curriculum data collection. (MSE)

Postcolonial African, Indian, and West Indian literature, written in varieties of English that reflect individual cultures, is a rich source of material for teaching about diversity in college courses. Careful selection of texts and attention to their placement in the course are important to their successful use. (MSE)

A study analyzed faculty goals for intellectual development in introductory college courses, to examine disciplinary differences and similarities. Faculty usually assumed intellectual development would occur in conjunction with knowledge acquisition. Differences were found between disciplines, but not along conventional hard/soft discipline lines.…