A course taught at Pacific Lutheran University (Washington) encourages students to transform inner creative energy into an expression of their changing, developing identities. Students make shrines to their childhoods, create models, or costume themselves to express their inner lives. (MSE)

Many ethnic-majority college students have strong emotional reactions to ethnic-American literature and the conflict of social myth with social reality. Teachers can guide students through the seven stages leading from disillusionment to understanding (shock, denial, anger, rejection, examination, understanding, and acceptance) in part by…

Practical suggestions and application of six principles from cognitive psychology can make learning more efficient now and produce learners who will be more self-sufficient in the future. This means redefining student and teacher roles, organizing the course and content in a way consistent with how learning occurs, and helping students learn how…

The traditional college curriculum is seen as a collection of answers for students who do not yet have the questions; an alternative approach that nurtures students' capacities for inquiry is suggested and outlined. (MSE)

The teaching of autobiography is recommended as a means of inducing individual and social self-consciousness among college students. This refers to the study of reflective self-presentations of the lives of people especially concerned about social and civic issues, including statesmen, writers, social reformers, public servants, and literary…

This paper argues for the use of action research in improving the effectiveness of teaching by professors and briefly discusses the reasons why this is important. The paper stresses that if the purpose of education is student development, then teachers should also be developing in their chosen field of service. Action research helps bring faculty…

Research and theory suggest that college students' motivation to learn is related to their epistemological beliefs. Faculty can promote student motivation by designing learning activities that facilitate student development of more sophisticated epistemological beliefs. Faculty developers can assist in this by giving special attention to the…

This paper discusses moral development as an integral part of the educational process and development of college students. The paper's first section places the concept of development within a network of meaning that indicates "ethical development" to be redundant; i.e., if something enhances development, it is ethical, and if it is ethical, it…

A developmental model for collaborative learning at the college level, based on the notion of the development of expertise, is outlined. Five stages are described: (1) the learning of rules, techniques, and strategies; (2) applying the techniques and strategies to the particular teaching context; (3) developing competence; (4) becoming proficient;…

Recent research on how college students learn and what constitutes an effective educational experience is reviewed, and implications for bringing about desired changes in the undergraduate experience are discussed. Topics examined include students' ability to reason with abstractions, development of moral values, extent to which the curriculum and…

College and university instructors need to utilize selected principles of learning from the psychology of education. These principles of learning when implemented in the classroom should assist each student to achieve goals more optimally. The five principles of learning recommended to facilitate student progress in the higher education curriculum…

This paper reports on two studies, one quantitative and the other qualitative, on the effectiveness and influence of Freshman Interest Groups (FIGs) at the University of Washington. A quantitative panel study compared 442 freshmen participating in 21 FIGs with 1818 non-participating freshmen. Findings indicated that the FIG program provided a…

A four-equation simultaneous equations model was developed to analyze whether college student effort and achievement are jointly determined. Testing with 544 undergraduate students indicated that increased student efforts in working with faculty improved their grades, but course effort and library effort had no significant effect on grade point…

This volume contains the text of six speeches selected from approximately 125 plenary talks that have been given over the past few years at more than 40 Freshman Year Experience Conferences by leading educators concerned about improving the first year undergraduate experience. In the first speech, "The Undergraduate Experience: Critical…

This case study of an international teaching assistant's experience with college teaching focuses on the process of becoming an effective instructor in the undergraduate classroom. A developmental model that emphasizes clarifying the student's individual linguistic, cultural, social, and professional goals is suggested, and implications for…