Discusses the portability of a Canadian-made educational simulation software package, "The Electronics Workbench," to China that was part of a larger study conducted at the University of Twente (The Netherlands). Evaluation results of the software use in China are presented, including functionality for electronics education, ease of use,…

Today, K-12 schools urgently need change. Business administrators and principals both work in key leadership positions and must respond to current demands for higher standards and efficient spending. Both must share a clear picture of district goals, assume an interdependent attitude, and apply polished interpersonal skills in their work…

Attempts to measure perceived quality, based on customers' views within the context of a (British) university faculty office, using a modified SERVQUAL instrument. Internal customers demonstrated that perceived quality is driven by task-focused issues, stressing clarity, accuracy, and reliability. External customers, whose usage is more casual,…

Pressure for cost containment is growing at even very financially healthy colleges and universities. Institutions need to think concurrently about cost containment in terms of temporary, mid-term, and permanent changes to institutional operations and priorities. It may be productive to reframe the issue as "funding priorities" rather…

Compares the implementation of quality assurance mechanisms at the City University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore. Discusses public policy contexts in the two countries, the introduction of "quality process reviews" in Hong Kong, managerialism and the new emphasis on educational efficiency, institutional…

Although state laws governing school district investing are quite conservative, there have been some notable investment failures leading to the loss of public funds. School districts must beware three kinds of investment risks involving credit, market, and interest rates and consider safety, legality, liquidity, and cash-flow requirements. (MLH)

Purchasing in the Edmonton, Alberta, Public Schools focuses on delivering service that is driven by and sensitive to the customers. Purchasing Services respond to site-based decision making, and the Distribution Centre--a central stores operation--ensures the district the best value for dollars expended. (MLF)

Describes an evaluation model for expansion systems in information retrieval, i.e., systems expanding a user selection of documents to provide the user with a larger set of documents sharing the same or related characteristics. Highlights include a test protocol and evaluation measures for the efficiency of expansion systems. (Contains 29…

A recent study developed efficiency indicators (grouped into price, personnel, productivity, and policy categories) as part of an ongoing internal benchmarking process to help six affluent New York school districts manage their facilities maintenance and operations processes. Based on data analysis, the greatest area for potential savings (from…

The effects of five ability estimators, that is, maximum likelihood estimator, weighted likelihood estimator, maximum a posteriori, expected a posteriori, and Owen's sequential estimator, on the performances of the item response theory-based adaptive classification procedure on multiple categories were studied via simulations. The following…

This paper reports the evaluation carried out on the Music Teacher Education programme at the University of Granada. The first section deals with the European, national and university framework in which that evaluation was done. The four-stage methodology for collecting data, raising interpretations, external evaluation, and final report…

Amid growing criticism of public universities, there is little discussion of what appropriate institutional evaluation would entail. Six-year graduation rates are commonly used, and public bachelors granting institutions have lower rates than private institutions, but with the growth in non-traditional college attendance, these can be misleading.…

The article presents empirical evidence for the effectiveness and efficiency of a modified version of Trochim's (1989a, b) concept mapping approach to define the characteristics of an adaptive learning environment. The effectiveness and the efficiency of the method are attributed to the support that it provides in terms of elicitation, sharing,…

Objectives: This study investigated the efficiency of a social work care coordination model for stroke patients. Care coordination addresses patient care and treatment resources across the health care system to reduce risk, improve clinical outcomes, and maximize efficiency. Method: A randomly assigned, pre-post experimental design measured…

This paper investigates urban-rural and size effects on public upper secondary school efficiency in Northern Thailand. Efficiency is assessed by a nonparametric technique, namely data envelopment analysis. Urban-rural and size effects are examined through a Mann-Whitney nonparametric statistical test and by Tobit regression analysis, respectively.…