Turkey's Anadolu University is one of the world's largest mega-universities. It is engaged in strategic planning in response to changes in the expectations of the Turkish Higher Education Council and the community at large. In re-examining its vision and strategic directions, Anadolu University needs to be informed on the knowledge, skills, and…

Many consider rich argumentation to be the core of quality discussions and view it as a vehicle to solving problems and clarifying content. This study examined the influence of a discussion leader intervention on the quality of online argumentation and interactivity. Subjects were 44 undergraduate students who participated in online discussions on…

As part of an application for a federal grant, College of the Canyons, in California, conducted a study to determine the number of fall 1992 students from families with low income levels and their racial/ethnic groups. Low income was defined as an amount equal to 150% of the poverty income level established by the United States Bureau of the…

This text provides a linguistic analysis of discourse register in English, Nukulaelae Tuvaluan, Korean, and Somali, using a multi-dimensional analytical framework and including sociocultural descriptions. Methodology included a description of the text corpora, linguistic features, and computational/statistical techniques used; theoretical issues…

To study the nature and extent of the school-dropout problem among Hispanics, a review of relevant literature and an analysis of data from the 1990 decennial census were conducted. School-dropout rate for Hispanic Americans between the ages of 16 and 24 was approximately 30 percent, with the comparison figures at 18 percent for non-Hispanic Blacks…

A study used Alexander Astin's (1993) Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) model to examine persistence at the United States Coast Guard Academy (Connecticut). Because the study was conducted in a controlled social environment, measures of social environmental influence were derived from multiple inputs, including adaptability polls wherein every…

A study investigated how teaching students of English as a Second Language (ESL) about American culture would affect their attitudes toward both American and their native cultures. Subjects were 61 freshman and sophomore Thai students of English in a Thai university, divided into an experimental group (n=31), which attended a course on American…

In August 1996 Jay P. Greene, Paul E. Peterson, and Jiangtao Du, with Leesa Boeger and Curtis L. Frazier, issued a report called "The Effectiveness of School Choice in Milwaukee." The report, referred to as GPDBF, presented data that indicated that low-income minority students in their third and fourth years of participation in the…

This study investigated possible differences in family background characteristics of 140 undergraduate students, half of whom were fraternity or sorority members, at a state university in the southeastern United States. Students were asked to complete checklists which asked if they were members of Greek-letter fraternities or sororities. Three…

This study analyzed college students' use of motivational strategies in academic contexts. Participants included 11 male and 26 female undergraduate students enrolled in psychology courses at an urban university, who completed the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire. Analysis focused primarily on responses to the following sample…

This study examined the relationship of dental students' (N=145) perceptions of how much control they have over their environments to their academic achievement and to such demographic variables as age, gender, race, or ethnicity. Subjects were given a questionnaire to obtain demographic information and Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control…

This dissertation focuses on predicting alumni gift giving behavior at a large public research university (University of Michigan). A conceptual model was developed for predicting alumni giving behavior in order to advance the theoretical understanding of how capacity to give, motivation to give, and their interaction effect gift giving behavior.…

An overview of cost analysis is provided as it relates to a particular educational reform--the use of performance or authentic assessment on a large scale as a means of transforming entire educational systems. The focus of the inquiry is the New Standards Project (NSP), a joint effort of the National Center on Education and the Economy and the…

The usefulness of a "lexical universe" in the development of verbal reasoning tests was studied. The lexical universe, which is a comprehensive listing of words and their frequencies based on a collection of machine-readable texts exceeding 14 million words of running text, is an outcome of a 1987 College Board study of the language in…

This report presents findings on children's living arrangements as taken from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The SIPP is unique in that it records how each person is related to everyone else in the household. Detailed information on parent-child relationships is provided, allowing identification of biological, step, foster,…