This return-on-investment (ROI) evaluation study determined the business impact of the sales negotiation training course to Dell Computer Corporation. A five-step ROI measurement process was used: Plan-Develop-Analyze-Communicate-Leverage. The corporate sales information database was used to compare pre- and post-training metrics for both training…

Summarizes goals of state education aid, presents a conceptual model of aid's welfare effects, and examines the literature of tax and expenditure effects. Capitalization changes the relative desirability of two goals; equalizing resources across districts becomes less important than equalizing school districts' actual spending levels. (Contains 45…

Strategies to help garner community support in school technology growth or maintenance include the following: (1) consider a "current state of technology" report; (2) forget five-year plans; (3) develop annual technology reports; (4) look to your website; (5) seek constructive opportunities to share technology, and (6) show off best examples at…

Five models of program evaluation--needs assessment, feasibility study, process evaluation, outcome evaluation, and cost analysis--are described, and how they differ from research is explained. Six groups of stakeholders are identified, reasons for doing evaluations are discussed, qualitative and quantitative methods are described, five stages of…

Describes an early distance learning program called the Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI) which used broadcast television and an airplane, eventually to be replaced by satellites. Discusses elements needed for successful distance education programs, including a usable and affordable technology and high quality…

This case study evaluated restructuring by a faculty team of a large-enrollment computer fluency course at the University of Buffalo. It found that using existing online materials (acting as "early followers" rather than "early adopters") gave students multiple ways to learn and kept costs down. (EV)

Determines optimal school size by exploring the cost-effectiveness of supplying study fields (services) in Belgian secondary schools. Using information on the fixed cost of supplying a study field (student density and transport cost), one may determine the optimal number of students in each study field. Actual size is far from optimal. (Contains…

In this paper Cognitive Abilities Test scores are compared directly with moderated GCSE scores awarded to the same group of pupils. For ease of interpretation the comparisons are presented in a graphical form. Whilst some provisional and tentative conclusions are drawn about the reliability of GCSE art, questions are raised about the general…

Uncertainty and irreversibility are central to online learning projects, but have been neglected in the existing educational cost-benefit analysis literature. This paper builds some simple illustrative models of the impact of irreversibility and uncertainty, and shows how different types of cost and demand uncertainty can have substantial impacts…

Meta-analytic techniques are employed to find if the impacts of government funded training programs on earnings grew or deteriorated with time. Further, studies are recommended to understand the cost-effectiveness of training programs.

In New South Wales, Australia, a cost-effectiveness evaluation was conducted of an adult drug court (ADC) program as an alternative to jail for criminal offenders addicted to illicit drugs. This article describes the program, the cost-effectiveness analysis, and the results. The results of this study reveal that, for the 23-month period of the…

This article presents a study of the cost-effectiveness of government inputs in raising achievement scores in Bangladeshi primary schools. The analysis itself involves three steps: regression analysis, cost-analysis and simulation analysis--each built on the previous step to identify the most cost-effective government inputs. The paper describes…

In theory, not-for-profit organizations will be characterized by higher production costs per unit of output than for-profit producers of otherwise-identical goods/services, since profit maximization implies cost minimization per unit of output; breaking even does not imply cost minimization and, indeed, may imply inflated costs. We explore the…

The authors present 3 experiments demonstrating ways to reduce illegal moves in problem-solving tasks. They propose a 3-stage framework for the rejection of illegal moves. An illegal move must come to mind and be selected, checked for legality, and correctly rejected. Illegal move reduction can occur at any stage. Control group participants…

In academic settings, battling Internet threats and coming out unscathed is uncommon. Unfortunately, on many college campuses cyber-security concerns rarely extend beyond the IT staff and are addressed in a disparate, ad-hoc fashion. Yet, while many universities and large corporations were hit hard by the recent NetSky and Sasser worms, fewer than…