A Variety of Diversity: Facing Higher Education's Educational Challenges

First among the many important challenges facing American higher education is the need to improve die effectiveness of our educational programs. Public concern has heightened the sense of urgency for colleges and universities to make progress on improving and measuring educational outcomes. which is made more challenging by the varieties of diversity facing us. Diversity is not just an issue related to student recruitment or experience, but rather it is one that also relates to institutions and their faculties. New educational methods must address such diversity to be effective, and one possible example can be found in ongoing research at the University of Michigan that explores the educational implications of implementing a,web-based lecture capture system in large lecture courses. Student use of and reactions to such systems is important, as is the potential to influence course performance for students in general. but also for under-represented and at-risk student subpopulations. In addition to helping bring our current landscape into focus. this paper will identify effective practices as well as continuing challenges to improving educational practice for undergraduate students.