Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944 [PAGE 1069]

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES

ences, the social sciences, the humanities, general education, English, and philosophy and psychology. T w o printed studies in higher education have already been published in the fields of English composition and examinations in law. 8 2. The faculty of the University has for some years been interested in the problems of teaching rhetoric at the undergraduate level. One of the printed studies referred to above is a result of the cooperation of the office of the Provost with the English Department. The office of the Provost has been working on the preparation of objective type examinations and has been making studies of the testing of results of the instructional program, particularly in the Department of Chemistry. 3. Recently the staff of the office of the Provost has been working very intensively with the College of Agriculture, particularly in the Departments of Horticulture and Agronomy. Faculty meetings have been held in the College of Agriculture at which teachers have demonstrated or discussed teaching in agricultural engineering, dairy production, home economics, and agronomy. Experiments and studies which have to do with: (1) the mental level of the students, ( 2 ) the relation of subject matter to objectives, (3) methods of presentation, (4) methods of measuring results, and (5) physical equipment required for laboratory presentation 9 are being carried on by the office of the Provost in cooperation with the College of Agriculture. 4. In the College of Engineering two professors 10 have been attempting to devise a method of instruction that would result in a greater degree of creative effort on the part of a selected portion of students in a course than would normally be true, without increasing cost or decreasing effectiveness of instruction given to the general group of students. Normally, lecture groups run to 20 or 25 students. Experimental sections of

""The Problem of English Composition in American Colleges and Universities," Studies in Higher Education No. 1, Office of the Provost, University of Illinois, Urbana. July 23, 1941. "Examinations in Contract Law Courses," Studies in Higher Education No. 2, Office of the Provost, University of Illinois, Urbana. April 21, 1942. 'See Report of the Survey of Courses and Curricula of the University of Illinois by the Senate Committee on Educational Policy, 1939, p. 51. '"Jasper O. Draffin and Fred B. Seely, "Preliminary Results from E x periments in Teaching Mechanics," Journal of Engineering Education, X X X I I (March, 1942), pp. 573-82.

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