An off-campus practical course is one in which students receive practical training in a vocational workplace outside of their educational institution. These courses focus on practical skills rather than academic knowledge and are essential for students to gain real-world experience and develop skills needed in the modern workforce. The research…

Recent science reform documents have called for incorporating authentic scientific discourse into science classes as engaging in discourse has shown to result in numerous benefits. Whether these benefits are observed in students depends upon the quality of the discourse in which they engage. However, characterizing the quality of student-student…

The manual presents an overview of the career development process for college students with language learning disabilities (LD). A systematic problem solving process is advocated beginning with job selection and preparation and continuing through retirement. Such a process can help the LD adult to identify personal strengths and weaknesses,…

Performance of 25 learning disabled (LD) and 25 normally achieving college students on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (Figural) was compared. Group mean scores were analyzed using a t-test. Group mean Figural Creativity Index Scores were significantly higher for the LD students than the normally achieving students. Subtest score analysis…

A sample of 202 students filling in a student evaluation of teaching (SET) questionnaire were asked to complete another questionnaire asking about the specific reasons for awarding a score to the specific SET questionnaire items. The aim was to find out what influenced students' judgements on those items. It was found that students' interpretation…

Presents a checklist of core behaviors for use in assessing students' strengths, weaknesses, and changes in thinking skills. Lists persistence, decreased impulsivity, flexibility, metacognition, checking for accuracy, problem posing, drawing on past knowledge and experience, transfer of skills to new situations, precision of language, and…

Discussed are three recent psychological experiments that demonstrate (1) how students can be instructed to falsify on two tasks that model scientific reasoning and (2) how the possibility of error in the data affects their attempts to falsify. Games were used in the treatments. (MNS)

Issues that face learning-disabled students and their parents during the transition from a secondary to a postsecondary setting are explored, and recommendations are offered for consideration in resolving problems during this period. (JDD)

A study investigated the learning and reception strategies used by six learners of college-level French, tested by completion of a rational cloze passage. The analysis focused on the effect of frequency, quality, and clustering of strategies on performance. Results suggest quality and clustering are most significant. (Author/MSE)

A study in a Dutch law school investigated interactions between students' learning orientation (internalizing/meaning, dependent, minimalistic, achieving/strategic) and appreciation of aspects of structure (content, organization, social) in the educational environment and curriculum. A consistent pattern of student attitudes that varied according…

This paper discusses whether critical thinking can be taught in the college classroom. It argues that education in general provides the tools for thinking, and therefore, improves the capability for better thinking. The Alverno College faculty, as an example, has improved student critical-thinking ability because the faculty stresses explicitness,…

Intended for language learning disabled college students and their tutors, the booklet examines the use of words as aids in understanding an author's meaning. Suggestions are offered to help students adopt a more comfortable and effective reading style. The first section examines ways to decipher authors' context cues for information. Eight…

The mental representations used by experts and novices for organizing their knowledge of a discipline have been studied by observing the categorization schemes these subjects produce when presented with a diverse group of problems. In this study, seven biology faculty, eight certified genetic counselors, and 26 students were asked to organize a…

Numerous research studies over the past five years indicate that a high percentage of college students have severe deficiencies in their ability to use mathematics as a language for representing simple quantitative relationships. In the United States these problems are nearly as common among students with strong computational skills in algebra and…

This book shows how faculty can help students develop skills in research, problem solving, critical thinking, and knowledge management by using Web-based collaboration tools. This innovative approach to teaching and learning emphasizes the use of virtual spaces, "knowledge rooms," where students "gather" to collaborate. The chapters are: (1)…