Universities have grappled with declining enrollment over the past decade and have explored various strategies to boost enrollment and enhance student success. To compete with other universities nationally and align their academic calendar with traditional semesters, the university in this study transitioned from four 11-week to five 8-week…

In this paper we examine the history and development of internal assessment practices at a university in New Zealand. The work re-visits the 'assessment arms race' study and builds upon the key arguments presented so far. It was discovered that student demand in the early 1970s triggered the introduction of internal assessment and workloads…

The abrupt change from face-to-face to Online Learning (OL) in the emergency COVID-19 semester surprised and forced students to alter their study habits. Then came the second online period, and students were expected to be happier and more successful since now they were familiar with OL. Was this the case? Had the ways students learned, their…

This column provides original articles on innovations in case study teaching, assessment of the method, as well as case studies with teaching notes. In this article, the author describes how she uses current biology-related news articles to introduce a course and its relevance, to actively engage students at the beginning of the semester, and…

This study compared student workload and perceived value of coursework assigned for a matching set of semester and term general education courses at Brigham Young University. Statistically significant differences in workloads were found between most semester and term courses. While term workloads were slightly lighter in general, both could be…

Education abroad is a high-impact practice that can lead to transformational learning because it challenges students emotionally and intellectually. However, differences in program design may have differential impacts on students' learning. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationships between design features of education abroad…

Students and instructors show moderate levels of agreement about the quality of day-to-day teaching. In the present study, we replicated and extended this finding by asking how correspondence between student and instructor ratings is moderated by time of semester and student demographic variables. Participants included 137 students and 5…

This paper uses data from a four-year college in Taiwan to examine the effect of adopting a stricter dismissal policy on course selection, student effort, and grading practices. Under the new rule, students are dismissed if they fail 50 percent or more credits in "any" two semesters as opposed to two "consecutive" semesters.…

In response to the Bologna Declaration and contemporary trends in Animal Physiology education, the Animal Physiology course at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Novi Sad, Serbia, has evolved over a 12-year period (2001-2012): from a classical two-semester course toward a one-semester course utilizing computer simulations of animal…

Students repeatedly chose between brief reinforcement (cartoon viewing) followed by a long time-out and extended reinforcement followed by a brief time-out. They infrequently chose the former schedule, which they rated as "unpleasant." Then they were instructed to choose only this subjectively aversive schedule. When participants were informed…

A number of U.S. higher education institutions are converting from quarter-to semester-based academic calendars; in fall 2012, seventeen Ohio institutions did so. Over a two-year time period, college student samples were recruited from a large, public, urban, Midwestern university that was undergoing a transition from a quarter-based to a…

In a recent study regarding online lecture videos, Evans (2014) shows that lecture videos are not superior to still slides. Using two Introduction to American Government courses, taught in a 4-week summer session, she shows that students in a non-video course had higher satisfaction with the course and instructor and performed better on exams than…

The interpersonal-psychological theory of suicidal behavior (Joiner, 2005) proposes that the need to belong is fundamental; when met it can prevent suicide and when thwarted it can substantially increase the risk for suicide. We investigate one source of group-wide variation in belongingness among college students--changes in the social…

The 4-4-1 plan adopted by Wesleyan College in North Carolina is reviewed with reference to the use of the May term or mini-semester. The lack of anticipated increased use of library resources is emphasized and suggestions are offered for changing this trend of the last three years. (LBH)

Effects on students of changing from the term to the semester academic calendar at Central Missouri State University (CMSU) were studied. Attention was directed to changes in average student credit hours generated, course load, grades earned, and classes dropped per students. Undergraduate and graduate students were evaluated 2 years before and 2…