The FIPSE-funded projects featured in this volume represent college and university educators at their most creative and most effective. FIPSE's focus on educational innovation and the intense competition for Comprehensive Program grants mean that the a pproximately seven percent of proposals that receive funding in a typical year will include a lot of very good ideas.

The projects described here not only began with promising ideas, but also carried them out well and achieved meaningful results and useful, hard-won lessons. They convince through force of logic, through the enthusiasm of both those who made them work and those who benefitted from them, and through the objective assessment of their outcomes.

Some of these projects received their original funding in 1989, and none later than 1992. Most were completed in 1992 and 1993, although a few are more recent. Accordingly, they reflect the prominent student-focused concerns of higher education in the early part of this decade.

Simply comparing the table of contents for this third volume of Lessons Learned with that of the second volume reveals some informative continuities and contrasts. For example, Volume II included a large number of projects focused on teaching innovations in specific disciplines. Volume III contains very few such projects but instead reveals an emphasis on innovations that enhance general skills development, particularly those which address the difficulties experienced by underprepared students. If this selection of projects is in any way representative, it would appear that colleges and universities continue to revisit, with new intensity and fresh ideas, a persistent set of problems.

While original efforts in post-baccalaureate education have always been included among FIPSE projects, the most successful of these efforts are sufficiently numerous to merit special attention in this volume. This development reflects growing interest in changing curriculum and instruction for postgraduate professional programs. The trend is worth watching. So is the trend for non- collegiate institutions to involve themselves extensively in teacher training, as demonstrated in the last section of this volume.

What is missing, however, is as important as what has been added. Most notable is the infrequency of projects focused on general education. A first wave of general education reform, directed at correcting the movement away from requirements in the 1960's and 1970's, was very visible among FIPSE-funded projects in the 1980's. This first wave of general education reforms seems to have receded at the end of the decade. Needless to say, however, all is not changed. Assessment and the use of computer technology to enhance instruction continue to be significant interests.

The brief introductions to each group of similarly-focused projects attempt to tease out more of these trends. We thus invite the readers of these volumes to consider the FIPSE projects they describe not only as a source of good ideas to enhance their own institutions' work but as mirrors, however imperfect, of the concerns of postsecondary education as a whole.

[Preface] [Table of Contents] [III. School-to-College Transition and Retension]

FIPSE Home