The papers in this proceedings of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) conference discuss collaboration with other disciplines, with business and industry, and with research foundations, reflecting the readiness to reach out that characterizes CPTSC in its second decade. Papers in the proceedings are:…

Although the Miller Analogies Test (MAT) is used extensively as an admissions test for graduate programs, relatively little research has examined the validity of the MAT for predicting subsequent graduate student achievement and no published studies have examined differential prediction of student performance from MAT scores. There were two…

A study examined the problems that four graduate students of various linguistic and cultural backgrounds encountered during their initiation to the written discourse community of American academia during their first year of graduate study in the United States, and how these problems were dealt with. Qualitative data including participant and…

This book is designed to provide knowledge about educational research and to help graduate students in education organize and conduct their own research. No prior familiarity with the principles, procedures, or terminology of educational research is required. Chapters are: (1) "Educational Research: Its Nature and Rules of Operation"; (2) "Types…

Essays for the Graduate Management Admissions Test must be written with a word processor (except in some foreign countries). The test sponsors, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, believed that this is fair because some word processing skill is a prerequisite for advanced management education. Furthermore, it might also be unfair to…

A group of three studies investigated sources of learning difficulty in 18 current or former foreign graduate students with limited English skills whose native language was Chinese, and compared the findings with those for a similar group of 14 native English-speaking graduate students. Students were asked seven questions about their first year of…

A study examined preservice teachers' self-ratings of interest/investment in the different contexts of an integrated whole language approach, both theoretically and pragmatically. Subjects, 60 graduate students enrolled in reading courses in a small eastern university, completed a self-rating chart dealing with the theory and classroom…

Evaluators usually assume that the data they receive are valid, or at least, that the data reflect that which is being evaluated. In a recent evaluation in a large southern school district, evaluators compared their raw interview notes with interview notes edited by the teachers interviewed or project staff. The program evaluated was Project SEED,…

A survey instrument was sent to all doctorate-granting institutions and all institutions identified as offering doctorates in plant biology. Doctorate-granting institutions were identified using the U.S. Department of Education's Higher Education General Information Surveys (HEGIS) listings. Responses were received from plant biology program…

This paper describes the impact on preservice teachers of an education course entitled "Teacher as Change Agent" which was inaugurated in 1991 at Union College (Schenectady, New York). The course represents a concerted effort to help beginning teachers bridge the gap between the real and ideal in public education without losing their…

This study examined the student characteristics, affective or cognitive, which predict academic success in undergraduate and graduate business statistics courses. The issue was found to be important because most business curricula require courses in business statistics and because both undergraduate and graduate students come to business programs…

Providing a variety of instructional methods and materials, developing unique and effective communication systems, and continually evaluating the process are the keys to the effective delivery of field-based programs in graduate education offered by Nova University (Florida). It has become a leader in distance-education programs by offering…

Long-term care administration often involves care for older adults. Yet, in California, neither academic training required for licensure in this area, nor continuing education for maintaining licensure, specify any knowledge of geriatrics or gerontology. A formal standardized approach to academic preparation for licensing would help ensure quality…

Individual and group assessments of quiz accuracy and students' discrimination of what they know and what they do not know regarding course material were examined using confidence ratings from 22 graduate students, 47 undergraduates, and their 23 heterogeneous learning groups over 6 quizzes. Students first took each multiple choice quiz as…

This paper describes a coding system devised to analyze conversations of graduate students in applied linguistics at Edinburgh University. The system was devised to test the hypothesis that as shared knowledge among conversation participants grows, the textual density of in-group members has more cues than that of strangers. The informal…