The award-winning website for Union Public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is one of the communications department's most powerful tools in building positive relationships. As with raising a child, the challenge lies in finding ways to nurture a growing entity--constantly providing it with meaningful information, adapting it to social changes, and…

Research on extreme sports has downplayed the importance of the athletes' connection to the natural world. This neglect stems, in part, from the assumption that these activities derive their meaning primarily from risk. The authors' long-term research reveals that the interplay between adventure athletes and the natural world is, in fact, crucial…

Program evaluation and planning is at the heart of efforts to integrate the domains of practice and research. Traditionally, research and practice have operated in independent spheres with practitioners focused on the implementation of programs that affect individual behavior and researchers focused on the development and testing of theory.…

Five years ago, the editor of "Exceptional Parent" Magazine requested the author to provide an account of a day in the life of the National Children's Study, an ambitious study by the federal government that aims to find out how the environment affects child health and development. Planning and implementation of the National Children's Study has…

Considerable research has been conducted on the use of the findings of program evaluation, but little, if any, attention has been paid to the soundness of the methods of this research. If the methods are not sound or not well described in the research, the strength of the conclusions of the research is unknown. The authors examine the empirical…

Demands on community-based prevention programs for performance accountability and positive outcomes are ever increasing in the face of constrained resources. Relatively little is known about how technical assistance (TA) should be structured to benefit community-based organizations and to lead to better outcomes. In this study, data from multiple…

This article focuses on the challenges involved in conducting evaluations of interactive radio programmes in South Africa with large numbers of schools, teachers, and learners. It focuses on the role such large-scale evaluation has played during the South African radio learning programme's development stage, as well as during its subsequent…

I review the development of the Fund for Excellence, which provides financial support for the Society for the Teaching of Psychology teaching awards. James McConnell provided funds in the early years of the awards before the Fund was established in 1987. I review the growth of the Fund and its administration by a Board of Directors, then make…

Purpose: This paper aims to present a picture of the past and the present status of the Distance Education College (DEC) of East China Normal University (ECNU). It describes what the DEC has achieved in each phase, and probes into some essential problems that the DEC has attempted to solve. Design/methodology/approach: This article provides a…

Enrollment management, the authors suggested in earlier essays, is a deliberate process of achieving an institution's preferred enrollment profile, starting by identifying the strategic purposes and mission of the institution, and then orchestrating the marketing, recruitment, admissions, pricing and aid, retention programs, academic support…

This article reports on the launching of the Revans Academy for Action Learning and Research at Manchester Business School on 26 November 2008. The goal of the Academy is to foster the development of action learning as a unifying framework within Manchester Business School. Its goal is to provide a hub for dialogue, collaboration, exploitation and…

As educational technology is rapidly changing, greater emphasis has been placed on preparing the next generation of teachers for effective technology integration into the classrooms. In this article, the authors describe the design, implementation, and evaluation of a course on digital game-based learning (DGBL) developed for the preservice…

Although several school districts in a southern US state use a three-tiered Response to Intervention (RtI) model to supplemental core reading instruction and positively impact student achievement, the model appears to have had nominal impact. The theoretical foundation for this study is anchored in a constructivist approach to education. Three…

The theme for this year's College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa was "Language and Community," bringing together graduate students and faculty members from the Departments of East Asian Languages and Literatures (EALL), Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures (IPLL), Languages and…

Background: This paper discusses the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention's effort to develop a web-based service called Project CREATE that responds to a need for targeted health promotion materials expressed by directors of HIV/STD prevention services in predominately rural states. Purpose: Project CREATE allows users to select customized…