Originally published as a special issue of Educational Studies, this volume demonstrates the ways in which sound considerations can significantly contribute to educational foundations. Regardless of their origin or interpretation, sounds are theoretically and practically foundational to educational experiences. As the means through which…

The mission and vision of adult education is to provide every individual in Illinois access to Adult Education and Literacy services. In Illinois, more than 1.15 million adults have less than 12 grades of formal education, approximately 2.8 million Illinois residents speak a language other than English in their home, and more than 350,944…

Three community colleges--El Paso Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, and Patrick Henry Community College--incorporated technology into the curriculum to support student progress in mathematics through developmental education. Each college took its own path: El Paso developed a self-accelerated emporium-style computer lab, Patrick…

For the past decade, MDRC has evaluated a number of interventions designed to improve the outcomes of community college students, including enhanced counseling, learning communities, and financial incentives. Encouragingly, many of these strategies have produced positive effects, affirming that changes in institutional practices and policies can…

These three papers present an organizational framework, an evaluation plan, and a training plan for an integrated cross-curricular tutorial program at Los Medanos College. First, the position paper establishes a standing committee to oversee the Second Generation Tutoring Program and the policies under which the program operates. It focuses on the…

This document is the first in a series of annual, faculty-designed supplements to Nassau Community College's (NCC's) (New York) manual, "Concepts & Procedures for Academic Assessment." The supplements are intended to provide faculty a forum through which they can communicate assessment designs and the impacts of those designs on…

The objectives of this research were to identify: 1) promising institutional practices for retaining and graduating low-income, first-generation community college transfer students at four-year institutions, including any transfer-specific support systems; 2) outcomes of transfer students (i.e., graduation rates) at four-year institutions in…

This document describes the formulation of academic assessment at Nassau Community College (NCC) (New York), presenting methods that can help faculty implement classroom assessment in the courses they teach. Section 1, the introduction, discusses assessment from philosophical and historical perspectives. Section 2 presents the five steps of…

Offers suggestions for teaching critical thinking in writing and humanities courses. Explains the rules of freewriting as they are presented to students, compares left- and right-brain qualities, and describes assignments involving focused freewriting and metaphor, and efforts to make assignments relevant. Describes the evaluation process and…

While researching the lives of well-known artists for a new unit in an art survey course, the instructor developed the idea of dressing in costume and presenting their lives in the first person. The primary goal of each lecture is to provide memorable information about the artist; a secondary goal is to integrate the social and political climate…

Five articles by faculty members from the Community College of Philadelphia are presented in this journal issue. "Reconstructing the Academic Environment: A Proposal for the Revision of the General Studies Curriculum," by Martin B. Spear and Dennis McGrath, offers a conceptual foundation for decision making in curriculum development for general…

A description is provided of a project that was conducted to design, implement, and evaluate traditional and guided-practice instructional modules for independent learning of word processing skills. After an overview of the project, the report outlines the following steps in module development: identifying an instructional goal, conducting an…

Addresses the problem of providing individualized attention in classes which, because of fiscal restraints, have 30 to 40 students. Presents five suggestions for the improved apportionment of the teacher's time through the use of learning lab materials and paraprofessional aides. Discusses the effectiveness of the lecture-reading-discussion…

Many instructors teaching large survey courses use the chalkboard to aid their lectures in spite of the waste of class time in writing and erasing, the clutter and confusion that may result, and the messiness of chalkdust. As an alternative, the slide-lecture method has been used for several years at Bossier Community College in teaching…

Cites six documents in the ERIC junior colleges collection dealing with the development of instructional techniques that maximize student learning. (AYC)