This article describes a unique process which allows a select few students who have been dismissed for academic deficiency the opportunity to create a Plan for Academic Success (Plan), which, if accepted, reverses the academic dismissal for one semester. If the Plan is accepted, the individual student assumes responsibility for taking action to…

This study aims at comparing the difficulty levels, discrimination powers and powers of testing achievement of multiple choice tests and true-false tests, and thus revealing the rightness or wrongness of the commonly believed hypothesis that multiple choice tests don't bear the same properties as true-false tests. The research was performed with…

The revisions to the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 require that career and technical education (CTE) programs provide students with a clear pathway from secondary to postsecondary education, and into high-wage, high-skill and high-demand careers. States nationwide are developing programs, called career pathways, to…

Central to the future of rhetoric and composition (or writing studies or whatever label we use) is the service mission of composition: to teach students to write. But that term "service" has not and will not serve us well. This essay examines the limitations and dangers of a service mission and explores a different model, that of a franchise, a…

Assessment of learning goals has become the norm in business programs in higher education across the country. This paper offers a methodology for the assessment of both communication skills and research skills within a curriculum of the Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Program. Program level learning goals assessed in this paper are: (1)…

American popular culture currently defines the community college as a job-training center, a site of remedial education, or a vocational institution. Certainly job training is essential in a period of low employment, and community colleges can and should help Americans achieve prosperity, engage in meaningful work, and achieve their productive…

A number of instructional strategies, if implemented correctly, can be used formatively to assess student learning. The first strategy--developing criteria and setting expectations in the classroom--involves students in the learning process and creates concise goals. "To be successful, students need to understand and know the learning target/goal…

In this article, we propose a model of the process of empowerment. The notion of empowerment is compelling and much employed across many subfields inside and outside of psychology, but the lack of consistency in the ways prior literature has defined it is an obstacle to meaningful synthesis of findings and consistent application in practice. Our…

Models-Based Instruction (MBI) is a comprehensive approach to teaching and learning. In MBI, a teacher becomes familiar with multiple ways (called models) to plan, implement and assess instruction, and then selects the model that can best promote specific kinds of student learning in each unit. By using several models within the same curriculum, a…

Systemic goals for gifted programs can take many forms. The authors place most program goals into a dichotomy--those that address the present academic needs of gifted students in schools and those designed to prepare future eminent path breakers and innovators. To clarify our arguments, we first define eminence and then offer examples from…

The author reflects on his experiences with standardized tests, emphasizing the dreadful consequences of our continued allegiance to them. In doing so, the author expounds on how public schools have kowtowed to a harmful societal preference for results regardless of processes, decision-makers' desires to quantify learning, and the desires of…

Historians often identify Horace Mann and other middle-class reformers of the mid-nineteenth century as the catalysts of the Common School Movement, the forerunner of today's public school systems. Despite education historians' focus on Mann and his ilk as the original advocates of common schooling, the notion of free universal public education…

Projects related to the European Language Portfolio (ELP) carried out at the Language Centre of the University of Trieste are concerned to examine whether and to what extent "can do" descriptors can be extended to courses in Languages for Specific Purposes. The project reported in this article had two aims. The first was to explore what…

The purpose of this study was to explore the elements of the alternative education experience significant to successful completion of the program. This phenomenological paradigm provided the framework for all aspects of the qualitative study. Students, parents, administrators, and staff members of two alternative programs in the southeast Kansas…

Beyond for-credit offerings, some library and information science (LIS) schools are exploring MOOCs as a means to promote lifelong learning and professional development. Using web surveys and descriptive content analysis methods, this paper empirically addresses if, in LIS programs, MOOCs can fill a role and serve new populations of learners…