In an effort to promote learning in classrooms, political science instructors are increasingly turning to interactive teaching strategies--experiments, simulations, etc.--that supplement traditional lecture formats. In this article, I advocate the use of student-generated data as a powerful teaching tool that can be used in a variety of ways to…

Business students are increasingly seeking international experience in short-term, study abroad programs to enhance their intercultural knowledge, intercultural communication skills, and global perspectives to be more competitive in the global arena. Intuitively, universities initiating these programs and the students sojourning abroad believe in…

A discussion of the use of advisory committees in college and university administration outlines their many potential roles at both program and institutional levels, identifying reasons they are established and often underused. Issues of advisory committee effectiveness are then explored by examining several types of underinvolved and overinvolved…

Comparing an institution's fund-raising cash proceeds with other institutions' is straightforward, using readily available data. However, measuring fund-raising productivity requires care in defining related expenses and resulting fund-raising achievements. Simplifying assumptions can be helpful. (Author/MSE)

Investigated how information about effectiveness of three classroom interventions influences teachers' acceptability ratings. Teachers (N=216) read descriptions of either mild or severe behavior problems and rated effectiveness of either token economy, response cost, or time-out intervention. Effectiveness information accompanying each…

Literature suggests that the factual approach to drug education may cause an increase in drug usage. The pharmacological approach was used in a college drug education course, and an assessment of students' drug consumption was made. No statistically significant changes were found for the substances surveyed. (Author)

Teacher educators are in a state of near paralysis concerning their program evaluations. This paralysis comes from adopting wholesale a dysfunctional evaluative point of view from the dominant educational research establishment. There is a history of overestimating the current relevance of experimental behavioral science models for the gathering…

Ways in which various student and program assessment tools can assist the academic advising function are discussed. Such tools include student test scores and interest assessments, analysis of advising interviews, administrative data on student progress and advising "flow," and student achievement measures. Information drawn from personal contact…

College public relations officers are urged to incorporate regular and systematic evaluation into program administration. The process of planning public relations activities would include qualitative research to identify issues; audience-specific surveys to gauge attitudes; action to accomplish objectives; and measurement of that action's…

An evaluation was undertaken of a National Teaching Improvement Project that was designed to encourage the general improvement of undergraduate teaching. The evaluation also sought to determine the effectiveness of mass distribution as a dissemination device to improve college teaching. During the first two years of the three-year project, four…

The University of Brighton (England) pharmacy and biomedical sciences school developed an institutional intranet providing course information, Internet links, lecture notes, links to computer-assisted instructional packages, and worksheets. Electronic monitoring of usage and subsequent questionnaire-based evaluation showed the intranet to be a…

A planning and evaluation model for management information systems (MIS) at the institutional or system level in higher education is presented. The procedure provides an analytical approach for assessing the effectiveness of an existing information system utilizing a variation of the Business Systems Planning methodology developed by the IBM…

Ways that higher education institutions can improve their compliance procedures in responding to external requests for reports and information are addressed. Institutional officers must first determine how the data will be used by the external agency. By questioning how the requested information will be used, a determination can be made of what…