A survey released last month suggests that many colleges and universities are reforming their general education programs and developing new curricular approaches and educational assessment strategies for measuring key student learning outcomes. As institutions review their general education programs, many are choosing to incorporate more engaged and integrative curricular practices.

Incorporating material that addresses diversity issues in classes has positive effects on a number of learning outcomes. The success of efforts to make curricula more diverse depends to a large degree on faculty willingness to incorporate these materials because control of the curriculum remains in faculty hands—both collectively, in terms of course and program approval processes, and individually, in terms of daily decisions about what to teach.

If you ask students what they want to get out of a course, most give the same answer: an A (never mind if learning accompanies the grade). If you rephrase and ask why students are taking your course, those answers are just as enervating: nothing else was open at the time; it’s in the same room as my previous course; my fraternity has copies of your exams on file; my boyfriend’s in this class; I heard you were easy; I heard you were funny; your textbook’s the cheapest one; or, my favorite on Ludy Benjamin’s list, “because my mother took this class from you 24 years ago and she said I could use her notes.” (p. 147)

When you assign your students to write a paper, do they know where to start? Upperclassmen surely do, but what about freshmen? Left to their own devices, they’ll likely turn to Google and Wikipedia as their main research tools, and may never even set foot in the library if they can help it.

As an associate vice president at the University of Utah, part of my job is to oversee the continuing and distance education programs for the university, including accreditation visits from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

Most instructors supplement their face-to-face courses with some online learning materials such as online syllabi, handouts, PowerPoint slides, and course-related Web links. All of these can add to the learning experience, but they are merely a start to making full use of the learning potential of the online learning environment in either a hybrid or totally online course. Although there is no standard definition of a hybrid course, one characteristic that makes a course a hybrid is the use of the Web for interaction rather than merely as a means of posting materials, says LaTonya Motley, instructional technology specialist at El Camino Community College in California.

How do you get the best out of your online faculty? Don’t make them re-invent the wheel each time they create an online course. Let them do what they’re best at. Free them from administrative details. Do their work for them. Give them a course template.

Learning communities, an approach to curriculum design that links two or more courses, can improve student success and retention and help students develop effective learning habits. Learning communities also can improve the instructors' teaching by exposing them to new teaching techniques and exploring connections between disciplines they might not have considered. However, to be successful, they require more planning and coordination than traditional courses, which requires a systematic approach to faculty development and support.

What are your institution’s signature programs—those programs that epitomize your institution’s mission and define its distinctiveness in the marketplace? It’s a question that every institution should address, particularly when faced with increasing competition and decreasing resources, says Jonnie Guerra, vice president for academic affairs at Cabrini College in Pennsylvania.