This chapter describes an assignment that immerses Millennial students in discipline-based politics and policy as a means of helping them meaningfully connect with content.

This article focuses on curriculum-based learning communities (LCs). In these LCs, manipulation of the curriculum is intentional and often innovative, with the overarching goals of developing meaningful connections among students, between students and faculty, and between students and their coursework. The variety of curriculum-based models…

There are unique moments in curriculum development when an opportunity for a fresh start or a major turn in design fleetingly presents itself. These moments opened up in different locations across McMaster University at different times and eventually led to several quite different initiatives in inquiry-guided learning (IGL). Well-travelled…

This chapter outlines the understanding gained when working with faculty to learn about assessment, to develop a plan, and to support them as they carry out and interpret their assessments. (Contains 1 table and 1 exhibit.)

Knowing how students reason and how to foster discipline-specific skills in critical thinking helps chairpersons respond positively to faculty concerns about students' reasoning deficiencies. The challenge of teaching thinking, critical-thinking abilities, beliefs about knowledge, overcoming students' limitations, and developing faculty interest…

Drawing on a number of studies of college student learning, this review concludes that students in different disciplines develop characteristic ways of learning based on their perceptions of what is required in their academic work. Within a discipline, effective learning involves an interplay between the characteristics of the student and the…

In a study using student rating data from over 8,000 course sections in a large university, disciplinary differences and the value students placed on the time they spent preparing for class are correlated with students' evaluations of teaching. Implications for faculty promotion and tenure policy, instructional improvement, and further research…

By adopting interactive methods and being sensitive to students' concerns, teachers can minimize uncivil behavior, even in large classes. Solutions found helpful by a number of faculty members focus on several issues, including setting clear expectations, addressing majority needs and rights, taking a proactive approach, and personalizing large…