Discusses the New Zealand Geography Olympiad for 4th, 5th, and 6th form geography students, focusing on the schools round, the regional rounds, and the National Final, which produced a four member team that traveled to Toronto (Canada) to compete in the 4th National Geographic International Geography Olympiad. Discusses the International Olympiad.…

Discusses worldwide efforts to use technology as a distance learning tool, particularly in less-developed countries. Topics include telecommunications and transfer of knowledge, including subject matter, pedagogy employed, and use of appropriate technology; and examples of three projects currently underway in less-developed countries to help…

Discusses a multidisciplinary workshop that addressed issues concerning internationally distributed information networks. Highlights include multilingual information access in media other than character-coded text; cross-language information retrieval and multilingual metadata; and evaluation of multilingual systems. (LRW)

This article examines the schooling that is provided in the world's refugee camps. The limitations provided both by the nature of schooling itself and by the international refugee relief system are explored. It is concluded that there are actually three separate paradoxes making problematic the development of refugee education programs. The first…

In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) the items are organised in small clusters relating to the same stimulus material (called 'units'). Homogeneity analysis (HA) is used to develop a detailed description of the relationship between all the items in one unit, using the categorical information available in the PISA data. The…

A Working Group on Medical Passports was established in 2002 by the International Association of Medical Regulatory Authorities. The goal of this group was to develop a fast-track registration process for highly qualified medical practitioners wishing to move from one jurisdiction to another. A "medical passport" would be available only to…

The issue of school non-completion continues to be a matter of concern for policy makers and practitioners in Australia today. Despite the efforts of governments and school systems to improve participation and retention rates, often one in three students drop out of school before completing Year 12. Major factors influence non-completion and…

The development of various national and supra-national accreditation systems is currently being discussed as a possible response to an increasingly internationalized and deregulated higher education sector. However, the establishment of such procedures may have unintended consequences, not least with respect to limiting the diversity of higher…

During the last few years, a national quality assessment system for evaluation of the core activities of universities has been established in Sweden. Beyond participating in these national efforts, Lund University has also participated in the European benchmarking programme managed by ESMU (European Centre for Strategic Management of…

The Junior G8 competition allows groups of young people from each of the G8 countries to have their voices heard on a global stage--the annual G8 summit. An international essay competition results in the selection of teams of students who travel to the G8 summit to provide a youth perspective on global issues. The 2006 competition focused on four…

The second Transnational European Evaluation Project (TEEP II) was undertaken between August 2004 and June 2006. A methodology for evaluating transnational programmes had previously been tested during 2002-2003 by ENQA (European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education) in the first Transnational European Evaluation Project (TEEP I).…

This survey examined linkages between U.S. and southern African academic institutions, focusing on programs in southern African countries other than South Africa. It is based on a survey of over 500 U.S. colleges and universities in the Southern African Information Exchange (SAIE) database, as well as surveys of southern African institutions and…

Andrews University (Michigan), which is sponsored by the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists, extends its academic program to 14 other institutions, three in the United States and abroad. The program permits students in other countries to obtain a recognized, quality tertiary or graduate education. Andrews' research library, the James…

The Internet is a worldwide network of computer networks. In the United States, the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) serves as the Internet "backbone" (a very high speed network that connects key regions across the country). The NSFNet will likely evolve into the National Research and Education Network (NREN) as defined in…

An ad hoc working group of the International Standards Organization met twice to study the feasibility of establishing an international standard on library performance measures. Having determined that library development in many countries could be significantly advanced through the availability of an international performance standard, the working…