This article investigates how mastery of prerequisite course material impacts student learning in follow-on courses. To measure the importance of prerequisite skills, we compare the exam scores of students with a GPA of 3.0 or better in their multidisciplinary prerequisite classes to the exam scores of students with a GPA of less than 3.0 in their…

Business service learning projects have the potential to be a state-of-the-art instructional laboratory to teach and apply theory and make a substantial impact on the community. In this article, the author presents a service learning project that is embedded in two consecutive required courses of the marketing major and has been conducted and…

Lower-level processes have long been overlooked in EFL listening pedagogy. To address this pervasive problem, in this study, a program was designed that integrated WeChat, the most popular mobile instant messaging app in China, into dictation practice. Students in two classes studying a compulsory university EFL course were selected as…

Because internationalization in higher education has recently received significant attention within the context of globalization, universities in Japan have begun to develop study-abroad programs to support their students in gaining international experience. This article explores those university policies designed to support the…

This article describes a mixed-methods study that examines the effects of literature circles (peer-led small group discussion of an assigned reading) on the reading achievement of college students taking developmental reading courses. The researcher-developed intervention was comprised of three connected activities (collaborative oral re-tell,…

This article describes secondary- and postsecondary-level students who might not be seriously interested in art but are required to take an introductory studio art course to fulfill a graduation requirement and those who enjoy artmaking as a pleasurable and socially engaging activity but are not enrolled in formal studio art courses. In the late…

Prior knowledge of and interest in subject matter are recognised as important factors influencing students' academic achievement and the quality of their learning experience. Teaching students who are diverse in terms of their prior knowledge of and interest in the subject matter is an oft-cited challenge in science general education courses. The…

This study investigates students' perceptions of creating video projects as part of their grade assignment. Forty-two engineering students at a university in Thailand taking an English course participated in the study. They were required to use English expressions from the phrase bank in each of 15 units in their course book to create a story…

The use of community service to promote learning and civic responsibility in higher education has blossomed since the 1980s. The problem addressed in this study was that although the X University initiated the required community service program in 2004, it had not assessed the effectiveness of the program from students' perspectives. Using Kolb…

Students' academic achievement in courses with a high mathematical content can be affected by their levels of trait, math and test anxiety. In this study, 180 university students were assessed on these types of anxiety and the relationships between them and students' performance were evaluated. Higher levels of math anxiety were related to a low…

This study investigated university students' attitudes towards learning English vocabulary through collaborative group work (GW) versus individual work (IW) while performing vocabulary-focused tasks following reading comprehension. The second year, non-English major, Taiwanese students (N = 44) worked either in mixed ability groups of 3-4 or…

For many students, developmental education is the largest obstacle to college success, hindering progress before they ever enroll in a college-level course. Postsecondary practitioners and researchers have been re-examining and challenging many traditional elements of developmental education from placement strategies to the sequence of courses…

Just as July 4th celebrations are set to begin, ACTA's new report, "No U.S. History? How College History Departments Leave the United States out of the Major," reveals that less than 1/3 of the nations leading colleges and universities require students pursuing a degree in history to take a single course in American history. Only 23…

As an internal expansion of the Language Proficiency Flagship Initiative at Michigan State University, 172 students of German took ACTFL proficiency tests in three modalities (speaking, listening, and reading) over the course of three years. The test scores and background survey data were analyzed to determine proficiency levels of students at the…

Possession of prior knowledge has been shown to critically influence students' learning in major courses. Yet the topic remains unexplored in the realm of general education in higher education. The study aims at investigating whether students lacking relevant high school knowledge background could benefit in the two courses, one inclined to…