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The growing body of research on student engagement in online writing courses suggests that learning management system (LMS) technology does not by itself create an interactive learning situation nor does it automatically engage students in meaningful interactions with their peers and the instructor. Traditional top-down engagement strategies such as a discussion forum, we argue, have not worked to increase student-to-student engagement in the online environment, confirming our contention that students’ notions of engagement and quality are different from instructors’. Engagement should be re-envisioned as a student-centered effort, wherein educators take on the responsibility of implementing strategies that promote student-to-student engagement. This chapter, then, reconceptualizes approaches to student engagement in online writing-intensive classes. It examines how virtual learning environments challenge traditional notions of student engagement, offers some innovative learner–instructor engagement strategies that can be marshaled to improve student learning, and addresses the challenges and successes of this undertaking, in an effort to establish a meaningful and sustainable student-centered online writing classroom.

The study investigated the relevance of psychosocial variables and how they interact with socio economic status (SES) as it relates to the persistence of African-American students at the major US public universities. The study analyzed the responses of 327 web survey participants attending a major public university in the eastern region of the United States. The results suggest that students from higher SES backgrounds, more than likely, have already acquired or are more easily able to adopt characteristics that are ideal for persistence (e.g., commitment to personal goals, and biculturalism) than students from lower SES backgrounds.

Previous studies have shown that – even after controlling for precollege performance – students who come from families with higher-income levels and parental education persist to graduate at higher rates and earn higher-grade point averages (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Pascarella, 1985). This study purports to provide the context for reflecting on the ways in which current student persistence theories might be modified to account more directly for how SES may influence psychosocial variables that contribute to the process of African-American student persistence in major US universities.

Louisiana State University (LSU)’s Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) is an award-winning office devoted to developing effective, educational approaches that incorporate guidance and exploration, increase students’ academic standing, and support measures to improve the institution’s diversity, predominantly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments. Through the incorporation of three main factors, Mentoring, Education, and Research, OSI has developed a holistic development model that offers students strategies to overcome those factors that affect their persistence in STEM. OSI houses several programs with a diverse population of students ranging from the high school to doctoral levels. Although varied in student population, these programs unite under the holistic development model to provide support and opportunities to students at each critical educational juncture. OSI’s holistic approach has successfully supported over 135 high school, 560 undergraduate, and 100 graduate students. Of the 560 undergraduate students served, 51% were underrepresented minorities and 55% were women. The undergraduate initiatives have garnered 445 bachelor’s degrees, with 395 degrees from STEM disciplines, and an impressive overall graduation rate ranging from 64% to 84%. Through all of the remarkable work performed in OSI, the greatest accomplishment has been the capacity to offer students from mixed backgrounds tools and strategies to thrive at any point in their academic career.

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), formerly the Education of All Handicapped Children Act, has exerted a profound influence on the education of students with disabilities. In 2004 major changes were made to the IDEA when it was amended in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act. The category of disabilities that was most profoundly affected by these changes may have been the category of learning disabilities. In this chapter we (a) review the development and major components of the IDEA, (b) explain the important changes in the 2004 amendments for the education of students with learning disabilities, focusing on two specific requirements, and (c) reflect on possible changes in future amendments to the IDEA.

The simplest approach to measuring racial composition is to calculate only the proportion of White students in the total undergraduate enrollment (%White). This was the most common approach in earlier studies of student body racial diversity (see, e.g., Astin, 1993).² A slightly different alternative, at least conceptually, is to calculate the percentage of students of color or racial minorities (students who reported their racial/ethnicity to be non-White). Recent studies are more likely to use this alternative (see, e.g., Antonio, 2001; Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002; Terenzini, Cabrera, Colbeck, Bjorklund, & Parente, 2001). This measure centers the focus of analysis on students of color and thus may be more advantageous than “%White” for interpreting findings. Still, the basic assumption underlying both approaches is that as the proportion of White students decline and by definition the proportion of students of color increase, the student body necessarily becomes more diverse. Accordingly, these approaches presume a zero-sum game for diversity on college campuses, where gains for one group come at the expense of other groups.

The potential benefits of structuring first-year general chemistry courses around an expert decision model (EDM) to help students develop conceptual understanding and sustainable problem-solving strategies are discussed, as is the creation of the EDM and the challenges faced in doing so. The usefulness of categorizing the course material as either process knowledge, conditional knowledge, or conceptual knowledge is also outlined. The EDM created for the course consists of four fundamental content domains branching out with a series of hierarchal questions and actions designed to guide students toward characterizing a question or solving a problem. The key characteristics of each of these domains are described along with aspects of this EDM structure that have been implemented over the past couple of years in the author’s classes and the impact this has had on the students and the author’s teaching.

This study documents the role of relational trust in an afterschool organization and its influences on young people’s experiences.

Through a 10-month ethnographic study of one afterschool program that teaches teens how to make documentaries, I demonstrate that the confluence of blurred organizational goals; weak relational trust among staff; and funding pressures may have the unintended consequence of exploiting students for their work products and life stories.

The study finds that, while not all organizations function with student work at its center, many afterschool organizations are under increasing pressures to document student gains through tangible measures.

Implications from these findings reveal the need for developing strong relationships among staff members as well as establishing transparency in funding afterschool programs from within the organization and from foundations in order to provide quality programming for young people.

This study informs organizational theory, specifically in terms of measures of variation in relational trust within an organization and its influence on young people. This chapter includes student accounts of experiences with staff to enhance the significance of relational trust.

Despite millions of dollars funding increases in the California Community College system, statistics show that less than 50% of students complete their two-year degree in six years. The 114 colleges that serve over two million students have, therefore, been mandated to implement student success programs under the Chancellor’s Vision for Success strategy. Dr. Ortiz Oakley’s plans to decrease attrition and graduation time while improving equity entail additional responsibilities for the instructors because one of its measures ties a percentage of funding to quantifiable increases in success rates. Such connection was one of the reasons for a no confidence motion voted against the Chancellor by the Faculty Association. Though circumscribed, this case calls attention to the general question of accountability in the classroom. Can instructors be held responsible for students passing their classes? In face of rates of failure that are rare in other professional fields and unacceptable given Community College students’ vulnerability and the vital importance of degrees to enter the workforce and earn living wages, this chapter examines how weaving a social justice component into instructors’ mission of knowledge dissemination leads to the constitution of a beneficial civil society but generates conflict among the Colleges’ leaders.

To describe how low-stakes writing can assist teachers in eliciting greater student engagement and involvement in their own writing by focusing the stages of the writing process more on student thinking than on the surface structure of their writing.

This chapter examines some of the important research literature addressing process writing in general and low-stakes writing in particular. The authors’ experiences with teaching English in the secondary classroom inform their analysis of implementing low-stakes writing assignments as part of the writing process.

The authors describe how using non-judgmental feedback on low-stakes writing assignments allows the teacher and students to have conversations on paper which are intended to help students explore, expand, and clarify their own thinking about a topic. By establishing a continuing conversation on paper with the students about their writing, the teacher takes on the role of “trusted ally” in the writing process, rather than the more traditional role of an arbiter of writing conventions.

Although the presumptive focus of writing instruction for the last two decades has been on the writing process, the tendency to turn the individual steps of the writing process into discrete writing products in a formulaic manner can cause many important parts of the writing process itself to be either overlooked or given short shrift. This chapter provides useful descriptions of ways in which low-stakes writing assignments can afford teachers the means by which to focus their students’ attention on key portions of the writing process so that their writing products are ultimately improved.