In March 2011, the State of Vermont Department of Education charged the Vermont Task Force on Teacher & Leader Effectiveness to develop guidelines for teacher and leader evaluation. Knowing and respecting the fiercely independent nature of Vermonters, Task Force members were committed to developing these guidelines for creating and assessing…

Higher education institutions are interested in the impact that they and concurrent life experiences may have on students' sustainability attitudes, but they lack formal processes to monitor changes. We used the NEP to monitor changes in students' ecological-worldviews. We were interested in what variation there would be in a multidisciplinary…

Library instruction serves a critical function in the operation of the contemporary academic library environment. Librarians are asked to provide instruction and information literacy training using a range of tools and modes of delivery. The current literature presents an array of instruments used for assessing student learning and for delivering…

This study applies the learning curve method of measuring learning to participants of a computer-assisted business gaming simulation that includes a multiple-life-cycle feature. The study involved 249 participants. It verified the workability of the feature and estimated the participants' rate of learning at 17.4% for every doubling of experience.…

Both the information technology (IT) industry and the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) demand soft-skill training in higher education and require IT graduates to demonstrate competence in interpersonal communication, teamwork, and conflict management. Group projects provide teamwork environment for soft-skill training, but…

Measures of quality are now in widespread use across states as part of quality improvement initiatives. For example, many states are currently using global measures of quality that were first developed for research and practice purposes (such as the Environmental Rating Scales) in their Quality Rating Systems (QRSs). Although global quality…

A three-stage paradigm for telephonically assessing suicidal risk and triaging suicidal callers as practiced in an Employee Assistance Program Call Center was investigated. The first hypothesis was that the use of the procedure would increase the probability that callers would accept the clinician's recommendations, evidenced by fewer police…

Considerable research has been conducted on the use of the findings of program evaluation, but little, if any, attention has been paid to the soundness of the methods of this research. If the methods are not sound or not well described in the research, the strength of the conclusions of the research is unknown. The authors examine the empirical…

This paper looks at corporate entrepreneurship (CE) training and proposes some insights for its evaluation. The literature review begins by outlining what corporate entrepreneurship entails and the rationale for a firm adopting a more entrepreneurial posture. Subsequently, organizational devices for encouraging corporate entrepreneurship are…

This article presents a discussion of the importance of a course in bargaining and negotiation to university-level students in an accredited business school environment. In addition to discussing recommended content, pedagogy, and assessment methods, the results of a study that examines the impact of the course on students' perceptions of skills,…

The deluge of early child development research over the past 20 years has sparked an unprecedented public interest in the first years of children's lives. Research indicates that quality early education promotes the overall development of a healthy child. The Desired Results System, a standards-based accountability initiative of the California…

This article provides the background and describes the processes involved in establishing a national approach to benchmarking the way universities engage with their local and regional communities in Australia. Local and regional community engagement is a rapidly expanding activity in Australian public universities and is increasingly being seen as…

This paper investigates quality assurance in Chinese higher education by looking at the Evaluation of the University Baccalaureate Programmes Project (EUBPP) conducted in China. It analyses factors that bring about tensions between policy and practice in this area through a study of two contrasting tertiary institutions. The results show that the…

This mixed-methods study explores changes over time in assessment strategies and identifies variables that facilitate that change by examining assessment practices of 11 teacher candidates enrolled in a one-year postbaccalaureate teacher education program that prepares for teaching in rural and urban settings of Alaska. Analyzing multiple data…

Motivated by the multiple-measures clause of recent federal policy regarding student eligibility for alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MASs), this study examined how scores or combinations of scores from a diverse set of assessments predicted students' end-of-year proficiency status on statewide achievement…