Amazon, Walmart, and other large-scale retailers owe their success partly to efficient inventory management. For such firms, holding too little inventory risks losing sales, whereas holding idle inventory wastes money. Therefore profits hinge on the inventory level chosen. In this activity, students investigate a simplified inventory-control…

The first step in the Validity and Reliability Study summarizes the history and purpose of California's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), reviews findings from other QRIS evaluation studies, and describes the approach to validating the system in California. The majority of this report focuses on providing context for the California…

The TIMSS 2011 International Database includes data for all questionnaires administered as part of the TIMSS 2011 assessment. This supplement contains the international version of the TIMSS 2011 background questionnaires and curriculum questionnaires in the following 10 sections: (1) Fourth Grade Student Questionnaire; (2) Fourth Grade Home…

Little is known about levels of personal growth attributed by students to typical college life experiences. This paper documents two studies of student self-reported and posttraumatic growth and compares growth levels across populations. Both studies measure student attributions of cause to academic and non-academic experiences, respectively. It…

Findings from the ninth triennial administration of the National Survey of First-Year Seminars, describing the nature and extent of first-year seminars on American college campuses. Drawn from a broad sample of colleges and universities from every institutional type, control, and size, the survey addresses topics including seminar characteristics…

A computer managed instruction (CMI) instructor role definition and training package was designed to help CMI teachers acquire the skills necessary to perform seven theoretically-based instructor roles: planner, implementer/monitor, evaluator/provider, diagnostician, remediator, counselor/advisor, and tutor/modeler. Data for the evaluation of the…

Describes an evaluation of two video modules developed at the University of Plymouth (United Kingdom) to interest and motivate students in learning mathematics. Videos to teach the concepts of motion and of momentum and collisions are described; students' and teachers' attitudes are discussed; and evaluations of revised versions are reported.…

Baseline information about numeracy education provision in the United States was collected in a questionnaire completed by 350 (57.9%) of 650 adult education programs surveyed. The usable responses yielded data about numeracy education provided to 774,955 students in 15 states. Among the study's main findings were the following: more than 80% of…

In order to provide linking agent trainers with some assistance in the area of personnel and training assessment, a search for suitable instruments was undertaken. This compendium and the attached instrumentation are the results of this search. Very few instruments were found that focus directly on linking agent assessment. With few exceptions,…

A sample of 30 instructors nominated as effective teachers to the Piper Foundation and 31 randomly selected control instructors from the same 14 Texas colleges were evaluated by students, former students, administrators, peers, and the instructors themselves. The research instrument incorporated ten sets of characteristics expressed as polar…

A survey of 100 manufacturing companies in the United Kingdom identified evaluation methods for and barriers to effective training program implementation. Most felt their programs did not reach full potential in terms of higher productivity, performance, and improved quality. A program assessment model and policy recommendations were proposed.…

As part of a continuing assessment of educational needs in a seven-state region, researchers conducted a verification study to check the validity of educational needs first identified in fiscal year (FY) 1980. The seven states comprise Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. This report describes assessment…

The "Workshop Evaluation System" comprises a manual, an evaluation scale, and a report form. The system grew out of a need for an all-purpose instrument to provide systematic and easy-to-obtain evaluation data from participants. The establishment of normative data resulted from the need for comparative information where local or regional norms…

Describes FOCES (Foster Care Expert System), a prototype expert system for choosing foster care placements for children which integrates information retrieval techniques with artificial intelligence. The use of prototypes and queries in Prolog routines, extended Boolean matching, and vector correlation are explained, as well as evaluation by…

To determine demographic characteristics of students enrolled in a variety of telecourses and some of the factors that led to their enrollment, the Annenberg/CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) Project funded a study in which 8,000 students enrolled in 42 telecourses were surveyed during the spring of 1984. Data from the study were tabulated…