Volume XXXII, No. 20 | September 24, 2010 A Record Year for America’s Community Colleges In the past year, the spotlight has been on community colleges in the United States. In July 2009, President Obama gave unprecedented support for the community college mission in his announcement of the American Graduation Initiative (AGI), stating: [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 19 | September 17, 2010 Seamless Performance Alert Intervention System (PAIS): Accountability and Outcomes The issues of accountability and outcomes are critical to improving student success and retention. As a result of targeted efforts to address ongoing declines in retention, Baltimore City Community College is successfully reversing this trend through [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 18 | September 10, 2010 21st Century Technology and Pedagogy When I started teaching college some years ago, my only teaching methodology was lecture. This, of course, I learned from my teachers and my teachers from theirs. Moreover, the only technological support tools available were overhead projectors, videos, and hand-held [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 17 | September 3, 2010 Common Read: A Community of Learners Experienced instructors have long recognized that reading well means being able to enter into useful, shared conversations with others. These conversations allow students to express their own ideas and to do so in an informed way as a response [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 16 | August 27, 2010 How Hurricane Katrina Changed Me as a Teacher Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, 2005. The day afterwards, the 17th Street canal levees broke. The break was three blocks away from our modest home on Bellaire Drive. My husband, his family, and I [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 15 | May 7, 2010 Team-Based Learning I could never quite understand why students who come to class every day, hand in their assignments on time, and ask questions during lectures performed poorly on exams. I assumed that by merely sitting in class and listening to the lectures they would [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 14 | April 30, 2010 Adding Fun to the Assessment of Learning Outcomes Most foreign language conversation classes are heterogeneous, no matter the prerequisites. The instructor is faced with various issues, including how to create activities that help students progress at various skill levels without boring the advanced students and [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 13 | April 23, 2010 The Nursing Troupe: Healthcare Learning from Theatre Problem “I’m afraid to talk to those patients; I don’t know what to say to them.” These remarks are shared by associate degree nursing students as they prepare for psychiatric clinical experiences. Students often are afraid to talk [...]

Volume XXXII, No. 12 | April 16, 2010 CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT FROM OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM I began my teaching career in 1970, when I was hired by the Irving Independent School District. I majored in P.E. and English, and my teaching assignment was to coach sports and teach seventh-grade English. Crockett Junior High was [...]