The National Environmental Education and Training Foundation commissioned a survey on environmental attitudes and behaviors of disadvantaged youth in America to identify the critical gaps in environmental education so that resources can be targeted more effectively. Phase 1 consisted of qualitative research among disadvantaged students through…

Findings from a study of the status of Hispanic Americans in South Minneapolis (Minnesota) are presented. Data are from interviews with 34 individuals identified as knowledgeable about the conditions of Latinos in Minneapolis, 4 focus group meetings with an additional 46 community residents, and information from published sources about the size…

Excursions, or field trips, are a common component of early childhood programs, seen as a means of enriching the curriculum by providing experiences with people, places, and things in the community. Although excursions have been used as a framework for research on children's memory development, research on the efficacy of excursions in terms of…

This paper describes a health education program developed by Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin for students at a university health center. Three goals of the program, which was targeted at 2,000 incoming first-year students, are listed: (1) to increase student awareness of existing services related to contraception and prevention/treatment of…

On December 10, 2004, selected education and assistive technology (AT) leaders were invited to an AT visioning activity that intended to lead to the development of a national AT agenda. Participants were presented with seven questions to stimulate thinking regarding both the status and future of AT service delivery. Themes resulting from the…

The inclusion of online learning technologies into the higher education (HE) curriculum is frequently associated with the design and development of new models of learning. One could argue that e-learning even demands a reconfiguration of traditional methods of learning and teaching. However, this transformation in pedagogic methodology does not…

As part of the continuing efforts to improve the quality of online learning in the course and program offerings of a state-wide consortium of higher education institutions, the Connecticut Distance Learning Consortium has undertaken a 3-year research project to better understand how online students first approach Web-based learning and how that…

The purpose of this paper was to construct, refine, and test a measure of adolescent peer susceptibility. Current conceptualizations of peer susceptibility largely are one dimensional and include at most one or two domains of psychosocial functioning. In addition, most assessments of peer susceptibility are situation- or behavior-specific, thus…

The purpose of this program evaluation was to identify the effects of Small Learning Community (SLC) reforms on school climate, student attitudes and student performance. Eight SLC programs in five Albuquerque high schools were studied for one to four years, depending on each program's date of inception. Data were collected from students,…

A study was undertaken at the Community College of Philadelphia (CCP) to understand why some at-risk students are able to beat the odds and achieve educational success while others are not. The theoretical underpinnings for this research draw from psychological, societal, and institution-specific models of student persistence. All 1996 CCP…

This project tested the appropriateness of SERVQUAL (i.e., an instrument widely used in the service industry for assessing service quality based on repeated service encounters rather than a particular service encounter) to measure service quality in special libraries and developed a modified version for special libraries. SERVQUAL is based on an…

The purpose of this study was to explore faculty attitudes about the use of technology in the metropolitan university classroom. Researchers conducted four "electronic" focus group sessions with faculty at a metropolitan university via networked computers housed in a decision-support center on campus. The focus group sessions,…

This paper discusses reference services in the digital library. The introduction provides definitions of a digital library, and the first section summarizes the purposes of a digital library system, as well as key roles for information professionals. The second section provides examples of mediated and unmediated digital reference. The third…

This paper reports on a study of part-time faculty at Queensland University of Technology (Australia) which examined concerns and issues facing part-time academic staff, and led to a collaborative and dialectic process for implementing faculty-led changes. The first phase of the project involved: (1)data collection on about 800 individuals,…

This study examines the importance of structured reflection in service-learning courses. The study consisted of interviews with 15 faculty and 72 students from three different higher education institutions; interviews were conducted between October 1998 and March 1999. Focus group interviews with faculty gathered information about course design,…