Discusses organic architecture and suggests that learning environments should be designed and constructed using an organic approach, so that learning is not viewed as a distinct human activity but incorporated into everyday performance. Highlights include an organic knowledge-building model; information objects; scaffolding; discourse action…

Presents an approach increasingly employed by businesses to track and respond to their customers to provide better and faster services: customer relationship management. Discusses its applicability to the operations of higher education and institutional research and the role it plays in the knowledge management framework. (EV)

Discusses knowledge management that seeks to minimize information overload in order to enhance performance. Highlights include the differences between data, information, and knowledge; the relationship between learning, knowledge, and performance; the use of focus groups; documenting results; and knowledge classification. (LRW)

Explains knowledge services as the successful use of information in organizations that includes information management, knowledge management, and strategic learning, and focuses on the customer. Discusses the role of special librarians and information professionals, benefits to the organization, and return on investment. (LRW)

Presents 10 questions that development officers should be able to answer from their database and the powerful implications this data mining has for both annual and major giving programs. Discusses development officers' increasing need for in-house expertise in data analysis. (EV)

Scholarship has not undergone a paradigm shift in terms of argument and research with the introduction of the Web-based information world. Searching, on the other hand, has undergone a significant shift. In teaching students to find, use, and evaluate information, librarians and instructors need a useful model of the information world that enables…

There is emerging consensus that the United States faces major higher education challenges, including: (1) America's fall from first to tenth place internationally in the percentage of the population with higher education degrees at a time when the country faces increased global economic competition in a knowledge-intensive economy; (2) Education…

Assessment is a worthwhile undertaking when meaningful data are generated, evidence-based improvement initiatives are thoroughly considered and discussed, and results are ultimately used to improve educational effectiveness. National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) results are oriented toward such practical use. Each year, more campuses use…

The "2011 Superintendent's Briefing Book" provides comprehensive yet concise overviews of the best thinking available on a wide range of top-priority PreK-12 education concerns. This resource will prove invaluable in making research-based decisions with confidence, and in identifying programs and practices that will improve student achievement.…

Using data from national surveys of teachers and school districts, this brief provides the first national estimates of the prevalence of K-12 teachers' access to and use of electronic student data management systems. Specifically, the brief seeks to determine how broadly student data systems are being implemented in districts and schools; the…

Two interpretive case studies are reported that investigate the intentionality of defensiveness versus open-mindedness in persons who hold flawed ideological beliefs. The 1st analyzes an academic authority's resistance to information that disconfirms a therapeutic intervention that he has been successfully promoting. His dissociation and…

This paper summarizes the many uses of the California Postsecondary Education Commission's data system and describes work in progress on adding additional data elements. It describes how the Commission is using its Longitudinal Student Data System (LSDS) to examine the movement of students through California's public colleges and universities. The…

Competitive Intelligence (CI) has become an attractive concept for Library and Information Science professionals, as information and research functions have become commoditized by end users, and financial, competitive, and performance pressures increase the need to demonstrate value. In the current competitive and cost-cutting environment,…

Social scientists have repeatedly demonstrated that individuals tend to underutilize base-rate information in favor of case-specific information in problems investigating subjective probability estimation. Despite the pervasiveness of this base-rate fallacy, little progress has been made in establishing a definitive explanation for its cause. This…

Information technology has developed to the point of providing a means to manage nursing and related health-care data effectively for nursing administrators, educators, practitioners, and researchers. Therefore, the newly recognized area of nursing informatics is important to the nursing profession as a whole. Nursing informatics is defined as the…