The paper investigates interactions on five online courses involving staff that currently lecture or support learners in further and higher education at the University of Glamorgan, and its partner colleges throughout Wales. The qualitative research involves an ethnographical study of the ethos of the online communities of students. The findings…

Primary sources in religion and history enable first year university students to connect "content-based" linked courses in the core curriculum. Fifty-four first year university students in three separate pairs of courses worked in teams to present oral critical reports on texts related to the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the…

Reform in the fields of adolescent and content area literacy have focused on broadening a definition of literacy beyond the ability to read and write. In a broader definition the language processes of reading, writing, speaking and listening become literacy tools to engage students in the learning of concepts and afford the learner ways to…

I created a newsgroup with Yahoo Groups and invited all male and female colleagues at the College of Languages and Translation to register. The aims of the newsgroup were to share college news, discuss academic issues and student and faculty problems, learn about each other's publications and academic activities. Although messages were sent to the…

Drawing on an activity theory analysis, Elizabeth A. Wardle considers whether cross-disciplinary FYC collaborations can help us achieve current FYC goals. Her analysis of learning community linked FYC courses at a large Midwestern university suggests that learning community teachers are faced with as many--if not more--challenges as traditional…

A novel approach to improving instruction in an introductory computing course for freshmen non-computer-science majors is to couple it with a logic course as part of a Learning Community. Research has shown that effective Learning Communities can lead to higher academic achievement, better retention rates, diminished faculty isolation, and…

USPE-L (recently renamed NASPE-L) is an e-mail listserv that provides a forum for physical educators to discuss their teaching and programs--and offer collegial support that may not be immediately available in a local community. This study used two sources of data collection including an e-mail survey (N=113) and follow-up phone interviews (N=10)…

Professional development sessions are parts of a coherent, focused program designed to elicit a specific outcome. A systematic professional development plan for reading: (1) prepares teachers in all of the essential components of reading instruction; (2) provides information on instructional materials, programs, and strategies based on scientific…

This paper discusses learning communities as pedagogy for introductory sociology courses, which are often plagued by student apathy. Most importantly, it examines the potential for learning communities to incorporate active and collaborative learning techniques as a vehicle to subvert dominant views of diversity, to see diversity as intersecting…

In this article, the authors considered the use of the software Knowledge Forum to complete a curriculum-based project with students enrolled in asynchronous, Web-based Advanced Placement courses in Canada and the United States. Knowledge Forum is an online database that promotes written interaction in a social constructivist environment. The…

Traditionally, universities focus primarily on instructionist teaching. Such an understanding has been criticized from theoretical and practical points of view. We believe that "socio-cultural theories of learning" and the concepts of "social capital" and "social creativity" hold considerable promise as a theoretical…

This project, "Many Right Answers: Learning in mathematics through speaking and listening", was initiated to address two issues in the teaching of secondary mathematics: (1) speaking and listening and its relevance to engaging the disengaged; and (2) the use of speaking and listening by teachers of mathematics as part of their Continuous…

Distance education fosters new kinds of collaboration--some intended, others unintended--among students and between students and instructors in college classes. The authors report the incidental learning activity within a complex of asynchronous online and compressed desktop video courses at a mid-sized university. Learning to use technology and…

This paper reports the results of assessment as an embedded learning opportunity through evidence from a course on Management and Spirituality for business students offered in 2002 and 2003 in the USA and Europe. It discusses how assessment can be strategically used to nudge students' minds through learning experiences that expand current mental…

When people think about how education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels can promote human rights, most people think about the content. For example, they think about lessons on topics such as overcoming discrimination or the right to a fair trial. However, teaching for human rights is not only about the "what," the content of…