Learning outcomes assessment is a critical part of a program’s success. It can affect a program’s reputation, enrollment, funding, and even its continued existence. Therefore, it’s essential to get useful assessment data without creating an overwhelming burden for busy faculty members. In an interview with Academic Leader, Lisa Shibley, assistant vice president for Institutional Assessment and Planning at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, discussed effective program-level assessment methods.

If you’ve been teaching for any amount of time, you probably have a few nicknames for students based on the personality traits they exhibit. Roben Torosyan, PhD, associate director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, has some nicknames for his students, too. Names like Q, Sunny, and Light Bulb.

Students who display a passive-aggressive personality style may do so in a variety of ways … from chronic tardiness to sleeping in class. Let’s look at the student who’s always running late.

The May issue of The Teaching Professor newsletter highlights some content from a really excellent article on caring for students. The article by Steven A. Meyers summarizes research documenting the strong and positive association between caring and a variety of learning outcomes. It also addresses reasons why faculty object to the idea that they should care for students—reasons like, students not appreciating the way faculty do care, that caring compromises professional distance, and that teaching, not caring, is the job of academics.

Most online courses rely heavily on text-based communication, but given the vast array of audio and video tools now available to instructors and students alike, it’s never been easier to enhance the media richness of the online classroom. However, just like with home improvement, you have to select the right tool for the job.

The Computer Information Sciences program at ECPI College of Technology offers job oriented, "hands-on" education required to meet the needs of an ever-changing and increasingly technical society. We encourage students not only to earn their degree but also to get certified in their respective fields. The great success we achieved in getting more than 50 students Comptia Security+ certified compelled us to share our experience.

One of the most useful elements of online courses is that they’re available anytime. But along with the timelessness, there is also an absence of time in many activities and pieces of content in the course that can that can lead to feelings of disconnectedness. How closely do we connect actual time to our students' online experiences?

More than 80 percent of college faculty use some form of social media in their teaching, with online video by far the most popular application, according to a new survey from the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson. The results were presented early this month during Cite 2011, Pearson's 12th annual higher education technology conference.

An editorial in the Journal of Chemical Education offers this critique of the introductory general chemistry course.