First five years are identified as a critical period of child growth in scientific literature. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10 that appropriated a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support early childhood development. As a result, Kern County Children and Families Commission administered over $10…

The most productive learning experience for students whether online or in face-to-face classes can often be the interaction among students and with an instructor. Online teaching and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offer the opportunity to examine intellectual social networking and strategies that promotes student interaction which can enhance…

Out-of-school time (OST) is a growing field that includes afterschool, evening, weekend, summer, school-age care, childcare, positive youth development, and workforce development programs (NIOST, 2000). Research demonstrates that OST professional development is critical to program quality and student impact (Weiss, 2005/2006). In an effort to…

The Basic Skills Report for California Community Colleges (2007) stresses the importance of comprehensive training and development opportunities for all faculty (tenured and part-time), administrators and staff members who work with underprepared students. With such a large number of academically underprepared students entering the community…

User participation and its relationship to system success have been discussed in the information systems (IS) literature from many theoretical and practical perspectives. In reality, most of this discussion is grounded in empirical research that has yielded mixed results on the importance of user participation and its relationship to system…