The Oklahoma County (Oklahoma) Library executed a six-month experiment in 1974 on one of its five bookmobiles to determine whether: (1) patrons would accept a primarily paperback book collection; (2) the cost of unreturned paperbound books in a no-fine and no-overdue-notice situation would be cost-effective when compared to the predictable loss of…

While concern for efficiency and productivity and the use of systems terminology are not new, the intensity with which the jargon is used is relatively new. Unfortunately, the technological terms have frequently become distorted and value-laden through attempts to apply them to compelling economic and political issues. As a result, administrative…

Prime indicators for realistic short term/long term project goals are budgets and timetables. Concrets, identifiable objects are useful in separating eloquent rhetoric from actual promises. Similarly, an external evaluator should be able to separate proposals with intentional misrepresentation of funding and goals from those which need further…

PROBE, a batch-mode information retrieval program used to search the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) data base, was developed by Indiana University. To evaluate the effectiveness of the program, questionnaires were given to the users of 200 consecutive searches during February 1973. Relevance ratios were computed by comparing the…

Data from the 1973 "Community and Junior College Directory" were analyzed to identify differences between full-time and part-time faculty. The data factors analyzed include: (1) type of control (public or private); (2) basic type of program (occupational, academic, both); (3) years in operation; (4) geographic region; (5) number of students; (6)…

The objective of the study conducted at the Centre for Continuing Education (CCE) at the University of British Columbia was to determine that threshold pricing not only existed for continuing education courses, but also was applicable to an administrative decision-making structure. The first part of the three-part investigation analyzed consumer…

This paper describes and evaluates the effectiveness of a program designed to improve technology transfer and utilization that was implemented in 1971 by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command. The authors first describe the organization of the technology transfer program and then attempt to evaluate its effectiveness over the three-year period…

The 94th Congress tends to view education as a bridge, a bridge that will make the labor market more accessible to the ignorant, the unskilled, the poor, the unemployed, the handicapped. Each of these groups constitutes a constituency in and of itself. The magnitude of education appropriations especially for vocational and higher education is…

A project to determine the level of development complexity necessary to produce cost-effective instruction is described. The project is designed to investigate alternative levels of instructional development complexity, how these different levels affect spending, varying degrees of student achievement associated with each level, and the time…

The objective of the project was to develop methods for establishing output and input performance standards for the placement and placement support functions of the United States Employment Service (ES). Volume 2, Findings and Recommendations, reports substantive findings and recommendations developed during the course of the project. A key…

Directed study is an individualized on- or off-campus learning experience arranged between an undergraduate student and one or more University of Minnesota faculty members for academic credit in an area not covered by regular courses. The College of Liberal Arts Office for Special Learning Opportunities (OSLO) investigated the directed study…

The development of effectiveness criteria for AFROTC detachments, and relationships between the criteria and various environmental and program characteristics are described. The objective of the study is the development of a method for estimating student enrollments and total operating costs at perspective host-site institutions by using…

Gallaudet College, a liberal arts college serving the deaf, has explored educational technology as a way to improve the instructional process for deaf students. Closed-circuit television and on-line computers have been used with the effect of kindling student interest and increasing the capacity of instructors, but no formal analysis has been…

Because the cost of computers has decreased significantly in the last few years and their capabilities have increased significantly, a minicomputer is proposed as the front end processor for an automated library system of a medium sized library. The local library processor is to be connected to a larger computer which hosts the data base and…

Recent reviews of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in various journals suggest that the technological and economic barriers to its adoption and use may be overcome in the very near future, and that CAI will be feasible in a number of educational settings. Computer hardware costs have dropped dramatically in recent years, and a variety of…