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In 2015, a librarian (Jessica Blackwell) and a course instructor (Trevor Holmes) collaborated to offer experiential opportunities in the archive itself for a large introductory Women’s Studies class. Since then, students from six semesters of the course have worked with primary source materials from the library’s collections. This chapter is a description of practice rather than a formal study. The authors describe design elements from the course, public products of the assignment, and reflections based on observations over time, offering several ways for librarians with access to archival material to co-design assignments with instructors. In the assignment variations, students visit the archive to complete a short transcription or digitization task pre-selected to benefit both the learners’ research skills development and the wider research community. Final products go live online, benefiting the students and the global research community. Then, students link the experience to a course reading in a critically reflective paper. While initially the projects hold barriers for students, in formal and informal reflections they ultimately find it to be a rewarding learning experience. The authors contend that the assignment has significant elements of experiential learning and high-impact practices.

We study research designs where a binary treatment changes discontinuously at the border between administrative units such as states, counties, or municipalities, creating a treated and a control area. This type of geographically discontinuous treatment assignment can be analyzed in a standard regression discontinuity (RD) framework if the exact geographic location of each unit in the dataset is known. Such data, however, is often unavailable due to privacy considerations or measurement limitations. In the absence of geo-referenced individual-level data, two scenarios can arise depending on what kind of geographic information is available. If researchers have information about each observation’s location within aggregate but small geographic units, a modified RD framework can be applied, where the running variable is treated as discrete instead of continuous. If researchers lack this type of information and instead only have access to the location of units within coarse aggregate geographic units that are too large to be considered in an RD framework, the available coarse geographic information can be used to create a band or buffer around the border, only including in the analysis observations that fall within this band. We characterize each scenario, and also discuss several methodological challenges that are common to all research designs based on geographically discontinuous treatment assignments. We illustrate these issues with an original geographic application that studies the effect of introducing copayments for the use of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in the United States, focusing on the border between Illinois and Wisconsin.

This chapter provides two case studies of online graduate student engagement where a community of learning is fostered using Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2001) ecological systems theory. The first case study explores an online graduate Sustainability Science course where students were provided with a space in VoiceThread to create video blogs (vlogs) and to extend course content with dialogue based on their values, relationships, and perspectives on issues like environmental degradation, social justice, and quality of life. The second case study surveys an online graduate course in Solar Energy, Technology, and Policy. These students completed a scholar-practitioner interview assignment of a solar energy expert, professional, entrepreneur, or policymaker. Both vlogging and scholar-practitioner interviews engaged graduate students in all of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979, 2001) ecological systems. For the vlogging assignment, the microsystem, mesosystem, and macrosystem were the most engaged; whereas for the scholar-practitioner interview assignment, the microsystem and exosystem were the most engaged. With respect to community building, both assignments fostered student-to-student interactions. The scholar-practitioner interview also fostered student-to-scholar-practitioner interactions, and, in some cases, student-to-alumni interactions. Innovative course assignments that engage professional, part-time graduate students with course content and other students, allow them to apply new knowledge, and broaden their professional connections are ideal.

Purpose: To describe how a reading response unit that encourages students to generate their own questions to assigned reading using sequenced instruction can serve as a basis for literary analysis, providing students with a much needed sense of purpose for and authentic engagement with a writing assignment.

Design: Educational reform efforts have focused significant attention on engaging students in assignments, –with the implication that educators connect the purpose and relevance of assignments to the students’ backgrounds and interests. Although educators have typically attempted to forge this connection via the topic or material around which an assignment is centered, the authors argue that purpose, relevance, and engagement are achieved more readily through developing the students’ own thinking about a given topic; their own thinking rather than a given topic, thus becomes the basis for the assignment.

Findings: The authors detail the sequence of instruction they employed to implement a reading response unit in an accelerated sophomore English class, the goal of which was to help students develop a literary analysis essay. The authors discuss how the structure and sequencing of the assignment led to increasing student purpose and engagement.

Practical Implications: Detailing the steps of a reading response unit designed to prepare students for literary analysis based on their own ideas can provide insights to current writing teachers and teacher educators regarding ways in which they can design/modify their assignments to be more purposeful and therefore more engaging for those they teach.

A framework for developing a multi-course undergraduate research project is presented, which (1) allows students to connect coursework learning with real company data, (2) engages students in relevant critical analysis, and (3) provides meaningful, content-rich learning assessment data that can be used to improve student learning. Sample assignments, an assessment rubric, and sample assessment data reports are also presented to illustrate how diverse assignments, with regard to scope, structure, and accounting skills, can be evaluated and used to improve student learning across the accounting curriculum. Importantly, the process of responding to the assessment data to make improvements to “close the loop” is discussed.

This article provides some reflections on developing a global leadership course at a public, regional, US university. Considerations for developing such a course are provided. Specifically, issues such as level and format of the class, course philosophy, and assignments and exercises are discussed—along with suggestions, recommendations, and lessons learned. This article may be helpful for individuals who are considering developing a course or module on global leadership.

Both accounting professionals and accounting academics have noted the importance of communication skills for the career success of students. Further, the general consensus from the academic and practitioner literature is that these communication skills are an area in which many students could use improvement. One factor that has been shown to impact the improvement and development of these skills is communication apprehension.

In this chapter, we describe a combination of pedagogical methods we employed in tax classes at two universities to reduce written communication apprehension among students. More specifically, we draw ideas from communications research which suggest that increased writing opportunities, progressively increasing the weighting of the assignments, using models and examples for study and comparison, and trying to make feedback more effective may help to reduce written communication apprehension. We implemented this suggested approach by using a series of assignments that incorporated writing components.

Results suggest that writing apprehension reduced from the beginning of the semester to the end of the semester. Further, the reduction in writing apprehension was even greater for those students who began the semester with high written communication apprehension. In addition, the results of the survey questions at the end of the semester suggest that the methods also improved students’ confidence in preparing tax-related written communication.

In this chapter, we explore how new technologies, namely, video essays, audio-based feedback, and electronic portfolios, can transform traditional composition curriculum and deepen student learning. We begin by discussing how new technologies connect and enhance learning experiences, especially within writing-intensive courses. For each of the three technologies, we provide a brief literature review, give a local case study, and conclude with suggested applications and related resources.

This chapter provides researchers and practitioners with guidelines for employing wikis to foster collaboration and active learning within and between student teams in higher educational settings. The core function of a wiki is to facilitate learner interaction with content. Such engagement is critical whether the course's instructional delivery environment is primarily face-to-face or web-based. Instructors encourage shared understanding through a spirit of investigation that embraces greater collaboration in the process. Collaboratively building knowledge about one content area by dialoguing with peers and negotiating importance in order to present the information in a meaningful way to the public is the strongest aspect of a wiki. To illustrate this, five case studies are detailed ranging from individual wikis to group consensus wikis in undergraduate and graduate-level courses, delivered in blended (i.e., hybrid combinations of face-to-face and online) and online asynchronous environments. As a whole, these studies support that wikis are not the single answer to all problems associated with collaboration and shared-knowledge in any learning situation, but they are a powerful lens for greater clarity in issues of student engagement and may lead to improved performance for diverse learners. Various experts add their views to those of the authors of this chapter; that to be effective, instructors must design purposeful engagement that embraces communication, cooperation and collaboration, active learning, feedback, and respect for differences. Likewise, students must be informed of the value of such engagement and have positive wiki models presented early in their online experiences.