This report describes Earth Lab, a project which is demonstrating new ways of using computers for upper-elementary and middle-school science instruction, and finding ways to integrate local-area and telecommunications networks. The discussion covers software, classroom activities, formative research on communications networks, and integration of…

A new productivity measurement system was developed for five sections in maintenance and supply at an operational Air Force base. The productivity measures derived from the system were used as a basis for monthly feedback to the units for a period of five months. Afterward, goal setting was added to the feedback for five months. Finally,…

As computers are acquired in greater numbers in schools, their impact on the social organization of instruction increasingly becomes an issue for research. Developments in the cognitive science of instruction, drawing on sociohistorical theory, provide researchers with an appropriate theoretical approach to cultural tools and cognitive change,…

Linking Outcomes to Organizational Planning (LOOP) was initiated during the 1984-85 school year in the Austin (Texas) Independent School District. LOOP was designed to ensure that evaluation, research, and informal findings became part of the instructional planning loop; to provide information to the Superintendent on progress toward priorities…

This chapter presents Hutchinson's Metamethodology, which is a methodology for building methodologies. The methodology is composed of a set of rules and procedures that, when followed and applied to any problem area, will result in a systematic set of procedures for dealing with that problem area. The following major processes of the methodology…

The Chapter 1 Program Improvement Project of the Portland (Oregon) Public Schools was designed to provide technical assistance to schools in order to facilitate program change and improve student achievement. The project was a joint effort by the Technical Assistance Center of the Northwest Regional Educational Center and the Portland District…

This paper describes the evaluation of the 4-H youth program (serving ages 9 through 19) in Yolo County, California. The paper concentrates on the first component of the evaluation plan, a telephone survey of community needs and perceptions regarding services for youth which was conducted in November, 1984. The originally perceived questions…

The handbook on progress evaluation was prepared for workshop participants. The Center for the Study of Evaluation (CSE) conducts a series of workshops for administrators and other evaluation team personnel. Specific exercises and activities are suggested using the five stage evaluation model. The phases are needs assessment, program planning,…

This paper attempts to provide evaluators, administrators, and policy makers with the advantages of and methodology of merging formative and summative data to enhance summative evaluations. It draws on RMC Research Corporation's 1980-81 California Statewide Evaluation of Migrant Education. The concern that evaluations typically fail to obtain the…

Materials in the Initial Teaching Alphabet (ITA) were developed for use in remedial reading instruction of functionally illiterate adults. These materials were used for an experimental tutorial session totalling 20 hours of instruction and two hours of testing and interviewing. The tutorial sessions provided a case study for use in formative…

Stimulated recall methodology in which the student actively recalls thoughts and reactions to a teaching/learning experience provides analytical data which can be used by the researcher in the process of developing and improving an individualized teaching system. This paper describes the application of stimulated recall to the evaluation of a…

This research investigates stochastic approximation procedures of the Robbins-Monro type. Following a brief introduction to sequential experimentation, attention is focused on formal methods for selecting successive values of a single independent variable. Empirical results obtained through computer simulation are used to compare several formal…

A few major concepts about evaluation and accountability are examined briefly, and related to one another in a manner providing a simple portrayal of part of the mosaic of educational evaluation and accountability. This paper is not intended for evaluation specialists or schoolmen well versed in evaluation theory and practice, but for the…

The major intent of this project was to design microcomputer lessons utilizing the unique features of computers to teach a high school mathematics topic. After reviewing the literature, it was decided to write a series of three tutorial lessons for a class in high school trigonometry which would present the concepts of amplitude, period, phase…