This article discusses the nonuse, misuse, and proper use of pilot studies in experimental evaluation research. The authors first show that there is little theoretical, practical, or empirical guidance available to researchers who seek to incorporate pilot studies into experimental evaluation research designs. The authors then discuss how pilot…

Purpose: The Comprehensive Assessment of Leadership for Learning (CALL) is an online task-based assessment of distributed instructional leadership. In developing CALL, researchers faced the challenge of structuring survey items that would measure leadership practice rather than individual traits. Critical in this work was developing items that…

Offering meaningful service to the community while engaging in active learning is a pedagogical strategy that has come to be known as service-learning. Both learner and the community are mutual recipients of benefits derived from the process. The fundamental question that remains is, "How do we assess the learner in this non traditional…

Professional learning to embed educational reform may need to take account of the stage of the reform rather than previous teaching experience. As reforms move to the embedding phase, some teachers have become more expert in executing the reform than others and may be well placed to provide professional learning. In 2007, the New Zealand Ministry…

Beginning in 2002, The Chicago Community Trust embarked on an ambitious grant- making strategy to improve education outcomes primarily in the city of Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. Known as The Education Initiative, this effort focused on three priority grant areas: literacy, professional development, and alternative models of schools. In…

Vocationally based higher education programmes are meant to prepare people for employment in their chosen fields of study. In nursing, historically, employment after qualifying has been almost assured, with sufficient vacancies available for newly qualified nurses. Recently, however, for a number of reasons, primarily related to economic…

The Academic, Personal and Professional Learning (APPL) model of support for student nurses was developed and implemented as a pilot project in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences of a university in response to a number of internal and external drivers. The common theme across these drivers was the enhancement of the social, academic…

The internal consistency and validity of the interRAI Community Health Assessment and Deafblind Supplement were tested with 182 persons with deaf-blindness. All subscales demonstrated good to excellent internal consistency, and expected associations provided evidence of convergent validity. This instrument can facilitate standardized service…

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing studies that randomize groups to measure the impacts of interventions on children. To do so, the paper: (1) provides new empirical information about the values of parameters that influence the precision of impact estimates (intra-class correlations and R-squares); (2)…

The pilot research project reported on here was conducted between October 2005 and March 2006 on one campus of one of Ontario's 24 colleges. The college is located in an urban centre in southern Ontario. The main focus of this pilot study was the exploration of issues of accessibility and accommodation for students with disabilities as they engage…

Introduction: There is much in the literature regarding the potential for commercial bias in clinical research and in continuing medical education (CME), but no studies were found regarding the potential for bias in reporting original research in CME venues. This pilot study investigated the presence of perceived bias in oral and print content of…

This pilot study proposes a set of analytical steps for comparing schools that participate in the National Science Foundation's Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program and their nonparticipating peers in the same state. This pilot is part of a larger effort to evaluate the MSP Program's role in student achievement, with two companion analyses.…

Action research can play an important role in institutional research endeavors to improve the quality of organizational performance in higher education. This article outlines how the action research perspective informed a research design that integrated fragmented and isolated student success initiatives at a large urban two-year institution where…

The field of program evaluation lacks interactive teaching tools. To address this pedagogical issue, the authors developed a collaborative learning technique called Program Evaluation: The Board Game. The authors present the game and its development in this practitioner-oriented article. The evaluation board game is an adaptable teaching tool…

Worldwide there seems to be an interest in enhancing the student learning experience through particularly interactive learning, which is an educational philosophy that places the student at the centre of the learning process. Such an approach acknowledges the educational contexts from which students come. What is even more important is the fact…