Successful colleges require effective leadership and governance. Effective governing boards are comprised of trustees who are committed to excellence in performing their duties. How do governing boards assure they are effective? One way is through ongoing board and trustee education and development, to provide the skills necessary to govern well.…

More than a third of all undergraduate students are 25 or older, and their presence on college and university campuses is growing. However, institutions of higher learning are struggling to meet the needs of, and improve persistence and completion rates for, this significant student population. "Increasing Adult Learner Persistence and…

Students' difficulties in assimilating new concepts can be a barrier to learning and may be exacerbated if the concepts are introduced in terms of detailed verbal definitions. Cognitive psychology suggests that a better approach to teaching new concepts may be to use prototypical examples of the concept as building-blocks from which verbal…

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…

As an aid to increasing teacher effectiveness, this paper outlines findings derived from the field of cognitive psychology on the way in which memory operates, provides examples, and suggests a variety of ways the information can be applied in teaching. Among the findings cited are the following: (1) some types of information can be encoded (i.e.,…

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…

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…

A project was conducted at La Montana Regional College, a two-year institution in the central mountain region of Puerto Rico, to design a system by which solid, empirical evidence of institutional goal achievement could be collected. The project involved four components: a study of the literature on institutional goal achievement and the…

In spring 1986, Lincoln Land Community College (LLCC) initiated a program to provide part-time, off-campus instructors with the professional support required to improve teaching effectiveness. The plan involved training 14 "master teachers" to function as evaluators of part-time, off-campus instructors. Master teachers have a minimum of 5 years of…

As part of a series dealing with competency-based education, this monograph explores the optimum selection and utilization of instructional activities, materials, and methods. The monograph first discusses the responsibility of the instructor to plan learning activities that reinforce targeted performance competencies, and then presents a…

Designed to help teachers improve instruction, this handbook provides tips gathered from focus groups of teachers and students at New Jersey's Mercer County Community College, as well as from other teaching resources. The first part focuses on the contribution of faculty-student interaction to student success, listing 21 suggestions for building…

A project was conducted at Western Wisconsin Technical College to create a peer tutoring handbook to provide guidance to tutors. This handbook contains a code of ethics, general guidelines for tutoring, ideas for organizing a tutoring session, questioning strategies, communication skills, and special considerations for limited English proficient…

The following are some techniques for adding depth to a survey course in mythology: (1) allow students to generate their own list of important mythological characters on which they are to be tested; (2) use films; (3) compare and contrast characters of different mythology systems using discussions, written assignments, and comparison grids; (4)…

This paper discusses ways to evaluate processes, describes methods of gathering information, and presents an outline for developing a continuous improvement model. Such assessment tools, as opposed to traditional "satisfaction surveys," can examine the service process and provide institutions with useful information to use as a catalyst for change…

Discusses characteristics of poststructuralism, and describes some applications of poststructural theory in the English classroom. Argues that a poststructuralist pedagogy need not neglect traditional terminology and traditional close reading of texts. (RS)