Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) uses a suite of assessment tools to guide and reinforce a cycle of activities that creates an institutional culture of planning and decision making based on evidence. This cycle includes institutional planning (goal setting), implementation of plans, assessment of outcomes, use of findings…

Through support of the National Science Foundation's Department Level Reform program, "Engineering Students for the 21st Century" (ES21C) has implemented a ten-course sequence designed to help students develop into engineers. Spread across the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) curriculum at Oklahoma State University, these…

In 2010-11, the School District of Philadelphia (the District) operated thirteen accelerated high schools that served approximately 2,000 under-credited, over-age students. Each of the accelerated schools was managed by one of seven external providers, each with its own educational approach, and each with a contractual agreement with the…

In recent years there has been an unprecedented increase in support staff in schools in England and Wales. There were widespread expectations that this will be of benefit to teachers and pupils but there has been little systematic research to address the impact of support staff. This study used a naturalistic longitudinal design to investigate the…

This chapter reports findings from the evaluation of an academic mentoring program for late adolescents that highlight the role of exposition to structured activities and mentors' use of some behavioral strategies. Specifically, different types of interactions in mentoring (such as discussing personal projects, resolving academic problems, and…

This paper reported on the findings of research into innovation in e-learning design and assessment through the development and implementation of online learning activities (e-tivities). The focus of the study was on Carpe Diem as a process to enable academic course teams to seize 2 days to design and embed pedagogically appropriate e-tivities…

In this article, we explore the association between students' value of reading and their behavior during a sustained silent reading (SSR) period, and their attitudes toward SSR and reading leisure books. 362 secondary students participated in this study and data were collected by means of a questionnaire. The results showed that more students in…

This paper examines the ways in which academically vulnerable students benefit from non-academic support. By reviewing theories of student persistence as well as program evaluation literature, the author identifies four mechanisms by which non-academic supports can improve student outcomes, including persistence and degree attainment. Programs…

Low-income high school graduates are less likely to get to a postsecondary institution than their middle and upper-income peers (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Students who do enter a four-year institution do not have the necessary academic preparation to succeed and obtain a professional degree. The study examined how two national college…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of voluntary discussion forums in a higher education setting. Specifically, we examined intrinsic forum participation and investigated its relation to course performance across two experiments. In Experiment 1 (N = 1284) an online discussion forum was implemented at the beginning of an…

When evaluating the effectiveness of their program, members of the Brooklyn College SEEK Department, a higher education opportunity program, decided to make their pedagogy more student-centered. They created a method of reading instruction, which they named critical inquiry. Its goals are to build community through teaching students to annotate,…

The love of learning--that intrinsic desire to gain knowledge and insight into new subjects--was once its own reward. That was altered decades ago when parents started using the proverbial "stick and carrot" to motivate their children to do well in school, or even just show up. Today, educators across the country have taken hold of this…

To increase the number of students graduating from high school prepared for college, North Carolina has established the largest number of Early College High Schools (ECHS) in the United States. Early results from a rigorous, independent study of North Carolina's initiative have shown that these schools have substantial positive impacts on student…

This study examined music and art classes as a way to engage young offenders in education, and to see if such engagement had an effect on their further participation in education, self-esteem, self-control, behaviour and literacy skills. The arts are often discussed as being an inviting and safe method of entry for young offenders who may have had…

In the fall of 2004, Benedict College--a Historically Black College in Columbia, SC--began enforcing a new grading policy called Success Equals Effort (SE[squared]). Under this policy, students taking freshman and sophomore level courses were assigned grades that explicitly rewarded not only content learning ("knowledge" grade) but also…