Students in an undergraduate human development course (N = 215) participated in a brief assessment of their reading (comprehension level, reading speed, comprehension rate) and multiple-choice test-taking skills on the second day of class. Students first read a one-page, 400-word passage unrelated to the course and then answered 10…

This paper promotes an undergraduate course that would discuss the great ideas of Plato, St. Paul, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean Paul Sartre, B. F. Skinner, and Konrad Lorenz. This course would help students understand human values and behaviors while focusing on historical, world, and national problems. Tentative solutions would then be…

Included herein is the conference proceedings of the 26th Annual Conference on the Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations, sponsored by the Psychology Department of the State University of New York at Farmingdale. The conference theme for 2012 was: The value of an undergraduate degree in psychology: Why psychology--Why now?. The Conference…

In 2003, the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan, established the e-School, Japan's first complete undergraduate correspondence courses enabling students to acquire their bachelor degrees solely through e-learning. Supported by the widespread availability of high-speed Internet connections, it has become possible to transmit…

This article offers an evaluation of the implementation of the American Sociological Association's Integrating Data Analysis Project in a large introductory sociology course. This project was designed following an examination of the curricula of 13 disciplines that revealed that sociology failed to integrate empirical, quantitative literacy…

This series of exercises is designed to provide undergraduate students with some experiences to deepen and clarify their understanding of the various approaches to personality. The exercises include the semantic differential, modeling, systematic desensitization, shaping, role construct repertory, free association, and approach-avoidance…

Faculty and students often express an interest in undertaking applied research that has a direct and positive impact on the community. This article focuses on the utilization and integration of a particular form of applied research, community-based participatory research (CBPR), as part of the curriculum. CBPR is a collaborative research process…

The weak noncovalent interactions between substances, the handshake in the form of electrostatic interactions, van der Waals' interactions or hydrogen bonding is universal to all living and nonliving matter. They significantly influence the molecular and bulk properties and behavior of matter. Their transient nature affects chemical reactions and…

This paper describes the details of a National Science Foundation multi-year educational project at the University of Oklahoma (OU). The goal of this comprehensive active-learning and hands-on laboratory program is to develop an interdisciplinary program, in which engineering, geoscience, and meteorology students participate, which forms a…

Small programs can make a big difference on college campuses. At Duke University, a few dedicated people, with the support of college administrators, exploited the all-too-evident liabilities of curriculum fragmentation, political correctness, and the lack of direction felt by undergraduate students to create intellectually valuable and…

Odense University College of Engineering has begun a revision of all curricula founded on the principle that student learning is the main objective of teaching. At the same time there is a large demand for increasing efficiency and increasing the possibility of professional development of staff. Development of staff should be possible by…

Cornell's experience over the last decade suggests that writing across the curriculum programs should not be housed in English departments. In fact, that experience, which has been largely successful, suggests writing programs are best off as independent departments, directed by rotating members from a variety of disciplines. The reasons are as…

Report of follow-up study of 23 four-year colleges and universities which had reported in 1975 on the organization and emphases in their undergraduate curricula. (AA)

Encourages professors not to lose sight of undergraduate courses in that they may inspire students to further learning in the humanities. Undertakes a discussion of "Beowulf" and Camus'"The Plague" to show how literature from other periods and cultures can be used to provoke thought about contemporary, relevant issues. (CAM)

Over a three-semester period in a large undergraduate human development course, students were assigned to 5-7 member groups to work together in preparing for an exam in one of the five content units in the course. Their exam performance was tracked over three units: a baseline unit in which students worked only individually, a unit in which they…