The market is full of vendors selling products each designed to solve institutional problems. But how does one choose the right tool for their institution and situation? Topics addressed in this chapter include: how to gauge institutional needs, how to evaluate products, and understand the available institutional resources (current and future).…

Keeping pace with the rapid advance of library technology and electronic services can be both exciting and daunting, especially for libraries with a small (but mighty!) staff. Out of necessity, small staffs often undertake many disparate tasks to keep electronic resources running smoothly for users. Because of these constraints, it is useful for…

This publication outlines the Digital Equity Framework--a set of principles, guidelines, and policy recommendations designed to bridge the digital divides at the state level, for K-12 systems, and for higher education. It introduces three frameworks for digital equity, designed to lay the groundwork for learners to fully participate in society…

Prospective teachers and cryptography students use programming, statistics and guile to enrich both their courses.

The field of learning analytics holds considerable promise for higher education, with reports of successful uses now emerging in selected institutions. At the same time, critics have expressed concerns regarding privacy, ethics, and intrusions into teachers' pedagogy. Without attentive planning, higher-education professionals applying learning…

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision-makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. Schools and districts are increasingly turning to online credit recovery as a strategy to help students make up coursework…

The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) convened the Examining Software Providers' Compliance With the NASFAA Code of Conduct Working Group in September 2019 to research and analyze the role that student financial aid management software plays in institutions' ability to provide accurate and clear aid offers. The…

This is the second in a series of five briefs published by the U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology on the key considerations facing educational leaders as they work to build and sustain core digital infrastructure for learning. These briefs offer recommendations to complement the fundamental infrastructure considerations…

Companies have developed a dizzying array of new software tools designed to do everything from assessing and monitoring students' progress to supporting a blended-learning environment to supplying entire curricula, complete with online activities and homework assignments. Educators seem to have developed a taste for these new digital tools,…

Teaching chemistry to nonscience majors is challenging because most students come to class with negative beliefs about chemistry. Those mindsets stem from their inaccurate prior knowledge of how chemistry relates to their daily lives. To address the issues and promote students' engagement in chemistry courses, we implemented ubiquitous biodiesel…

This is the first of three articles on academic fraud. This article describes the history and growth of diploma mills and counterfeit operations. The second article will focus on Axact, the world's largest diploma mill (a true criminal enterprise). The third will detail how to identify diploma mills. This article describes degree mills…

On the basis of her experience with buying new curricular materials--specifically, for reading instruction and intervention--the author shares valuable lessons about how to make the most of such purchases. A program can be beneficial for some students but detrimental for others; programs should be presented to employees as tools to critique and…

ERM librarians discuss their approaches to electronic resources management for an academic library consortium, the University System of Maryland & Affiliated Institutions (USMAI). They focus on innovation and developing actionable strategies for procedures and policies.

What should a school district procurement officer ask when he or she sits down with a sales representative from a vendor of digital education products? Who else should be at the table? How do districts and providers become partners in instruction, rather than adversaries in negotiation? These are increasingly critical questions as public school…

Librarians are familiar with the single-line form, the consolidated index, which represents a very large portion of a library's print and online collection. Their end users are familiar with the idea of a single search across a comprehensive index that produces a large, relevancy-ranked results list. Even though most patrons would not recognize…