Data mining is an emerging field of study in Information Systems programs. Although the course content has been streamlined, the underlying technology is still in a state of flux. The purpose of this paper is to describe how we utilized Microsoft Excel's data mining add-ins as a front-end to Microsoft's Cloud Computing and SQL Server 2008 Business…

Little is known about students' perceptions of online enrollment processes. Student satisfaction is part of the assessment required for accreditation, but evidence suggests that college administrators are oriented to retention and graduation rates rather than to consumer perception. The purpose of this descriptive quantitative study was to develop…

Given the magnitude of real and potential losses, both private and public employers increasingly expect graduates of management information systems (MIS) programs to understand information security concepts. The infrastructure requirements for the course includes setting up a secure laboratory environment to accommodate the development of viruses…

As demand for information on postsecondary education has increased, institutions have had to adapt information systems to accurately report data. Institutions currently respond to multiple constituencies including national media outlets, higher education associations, state regulatory authorities, and federal agencies. The purpose of this study is…

The Centers of Excellence (COE) provide regional workforce data on high growth, high demand industries and occupations for use by community colleges in program planning and resource enhancement. This article discusses the environmental scanning research methodology and its application to data-driven decision making in community college program…

Data-driven decision making is the process of using data to inform decisions to improve teaching and learning. Schools typically engage in two kinds of data-driven decision making--at the school level and at the classroom level. The first leads to the second. In this article, the author describes how Marylin Avenue Elementary School successfully…

This article reports on Blackboard, a course-management system used by the University of Maryland-Baltimore County to rate and track the "most active instructors" using the university's course-management system. Just about every college has such a system these days, designed to track assignments and manage online class discussions, but…

No Child Left Behind has increased data collection and reporting, the development of data systems, and interest in using data for decision-making in schools and classrooms. Ends-driven decision making has become common educational practice, where the ends justify the means at all costs, and short-term results trump longer-term outcomes and the…

When the author and his colleagues last left Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and Texas' Plano Independent School District in April 2008, both school districts were immersed in the long and labored advance toward becoming a fully matured data-driven operation, one that uses sophisticated technologies to gather data, sort and interpret it, and…

In recent years, professional practice has been an issue of concern in higher education. The purpose of this study is to design students' projects to facilitate collaborative learning in authentic contexts. Ten students majoring in Management Information Systems conducted fieldwork with spatial technologies to collect data and provided information…

This paper reports on an Old Dominion University (Virginia) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Langley Research Center project, NCSTRL+, a unified, canonical digital library (DL) for educational, scientific, and technical information (STI). NCSTRL+ is based on the Networked Computer Science Technical Report Library (NCSTRL),…

This book, by an author with a visual impairment, is written for people with a visual disability who wish to learn about alternate ways of processing information, including reading, writing, organizing notes, and doing everyday tasks. The first chapter describes ways of adjusting to the loss of sight and managing everyday living skills. The second…

This paper discusses the competencies that are required to work effectively with information. It examines the nature of the information resources and how students interact with them. The discussion moves to the types of questions students have asked and suggests that the predominant types may not be assisting students in developing information…

This document reports on a National Association for Foreign Students Field Service symposium organized to discuss future directions for research and information management in the field of foreign educational systems, especially in relation to student evaluation for purposes of college admission. Participants included representatives from…

The 16 chapters of this book offer innovative instructional techniques used to train public managers. It presents public management concepts along with such subtopics as organizational theory and ethics, research skills, program evaluation, financial management, computers and communication skills in public administration, comparative public…