Focuses on two aspects of the information requirements related to global change: (1) the changing information needs in the global change-research community, and (2) the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center as a model for institutions supporting interdisciplinary analysis of global change research. (MDH)

This volume presents five papers on higher education institutional research in Maryland, all of which were originally presented at annual meetings of the Maryland Association for Institutional Research from 1993 through 1995. The first paper is "A Day in the Life of an Institutional Researcher: Past, Present and Future" (Merill…

Designed for the community college practitioner who may be considering initiating a student tracking system, this report draws upon selected writings and other sources to examine the potential role of student tracking systems in student outcomes research. The report examines the limited scope of community college longitudinal studies conducted to…

This is the first report from an ongoing study of four urban school districts (New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and the District of Columbia) that are experimenting with new school designs and new ways of holding schools accountable for performance. This report introduces the idea of a "portfolio school district," and shows how some leading school…

This description of the development of expert systems designed to solve management problems focuses on the issue of corporate divestment as an example. Software needs are discussed, and an example of a management expert system for divestment analysis at James Madison University is briefly described. (Author/LRW)

This paper explores the fault-tree analysis approach to isolating failure modes within a system. Fault tree investigates potentially undesirable events and then looks for failures in sequence that would lead to their occurring. Relationships among these events are symbolized by AND or OR logic gates, AND used when single events must coexist to…

This paper examines effects of combining long-range planning and computer-based modeling in institutions of higher education, with examples from application at Butler University (Indiana). The model was developed due to a need to obtain a 5-year forecast of revenues and expenditures and consists of eight dynamic submodels--one for each of the five…

This paper describes a methodology for helping institutional research assess its roles and its effectiveness in supporting decision-making at all institutional levels. The paper discusses how to meet this goal by planning, doing, checking, and acting. Planning requires the understanding of the roles of the data custodian, the broker, and the…

A number of key issues facing elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educational administrators during retrenchment require a hierarchical decision-modeling approach. This paper identifies and discusses the use of a hierarchical multiple-alternatives modeling formulation (computer-based) that compares and evaluates a group of solution…

School districts have begun examining the feasibility of, and in some cases are developing and implementing automated systems for, managing and evaluating instructional programs. This paper describes and analyzes the issues and problems that emerged over the course of three projects--a large suburban school in the West, a consortium of five small…