This dissertation touches on a series of events leading to an aspect of United States public policy dealing with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). After exploring the literature that describes the understanding of public policy, this paper uses the case study method to understand why and how a single research center and a particular set of…

Change is indeed the watchword for this millennial generation and the inherent responsibility of educating our youth places our country's education system in the epicenter of that evolutionary experience. Such a clarion call for academic excellence requires an educational paradigm, which fosters a school's continuous capacity for improvement. The…

Drawing upon the concept of governance, this dissertation refers to the two most commonly employed mechanisms that ensure high quality knowledge in electronic repositories as expert-governance and community-governance. In three related but distinct essays, the dissertation examines the governance concept, and investigates contributing knowledge to…

Research indicates that leadership is an important element in student and school success (Darling-Hammond, et al.2007). This has been a factor in calls to implement extensive changes in how principals are recruited and prepared (Murphy, 2006). An essential element in this redesign is assessing the students that enter and graduate from it.…

Scope and Method of Study: Qualitative research to collect data from two sources: (1) Face-to-face interviews with school board members representing four Oklahoma School Districts; (2) Newspaper articles. Findings and Conclusions: Data from the study indicate that time availability and personnel expertise are determining factors in the decision…

Character Development continues to be the all too unintentional elephant in the room of Higher Education. This project looked at what character development practices are being accomplished and who in higher education is making it happen. No longer satisfied with leaving the task to elementary and secondary education, higher education has begun to…

This study examined the impact of different levels of task difficulty and expertise on self-efficacy judgments. In addition, the study examines how self-efficacy judgments affect the amount of mental effort investment and task performance under different levels of task difficulty and expertise. Results from this study are used to build a…

The affective aspect of music (popularly known as music mood) is a newly emerging metadata type and access point to music information, but it has not been well studied in information science. There has yet to be developed a suitable set of mood categories that can reflect the reality of music listening and can be well adopted in the Music…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the key roles embedded in the informal organizational structure (informal networks) and to outline their contribution in the companies' performance. A major objective of the research is to find and characterize a new key informal role that synthesises problem solving, expertise, and accessibility…

The aim of this article was to compare musicians' views on (a) the importance of musical skills and (b) the nature of expertise. Data were obtained from a specially devised web-based questionnaire completed by advanced musicians representing four musical genres (classical, popular, jazz, Scottish traditional) and varying degrees of professional…

This paper presents a methodology for the design of intelligent learning environments. We recognise that in the educational technology field, theory development and system-design should be integrated and rely on an iterative process that addresses: (a) the difficulty to elicit precise, concise, and operationalized knowledge from "experts" and (b)…

Braille-reading mathematicians, scientists, and computer scientists were asked to examine the usability of the Unified English Braille Code (UEB) for technical materials. They had little knowledge of the code prior to the study. The research included two reading tasks, a short tutorial about UEB, and a focus group. The results indicated that the…

This brief case study provides a pithy introduction to Uganda and outlines key factors that affect the implementation of distance education in the nation: poor infrastructure, the high cost of an education, an outdated curriculum, inadequate expertise in distance education, and poor attitudes towards distance learning. These factors are also…

Purpose: Wisdom has received increasing attention in empirical research in recent years, especially in gerontology and psychology, but consistent definitions of wisdom remain elusive. We sought to better characterize this concept via an expert consensus panel using a 2-phase Delphi method. Design and Methods: A survey questionnaire comprised 53…

This article examines how Moodle, as an open-source Learning Management System, can be made more interoperable. The authors tested two software standards, LAMS and RELOAD, compatible with socio-constructivism norms. The analysis showed that pedagogic activities created with the LAMS-IMS Learning Design Level A Format are useable with Moodle but…