This guide begins by offering advice to students who have been assigned to write a research paper and hints to teachers for ways in which they can facilitate the process for their students. It then presents detailed guidelines for students in nine steps: (1) Selecting a Topic; (2) Narrowing the Topic; (3) Formulating a Preliminary Question Outline…

Staff development is rapidly becoming more visible and more expensive. School boards and the voting public are becoming aware of the increasing costs and are demanding to know how effectively the money is being spent. It will become increasingly difficult, even job-threatening, for superintendents who guide ineffective staff development programs.…

This guide was developed to inform the child care industry about the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and to familiarize child care providers with the importance and value of including all children in regular child care settings. It offers an overview of the law as well as practical solutions to common problems and advice to ensure success in…

Information literacy guidelines provide all students with a process for learning that is transferable among content areas and from the academic environment to real life. The responsibility for helping students achieve information literacy resides with library media staff, teachers, administrators, and the community. The following five information…

Designed to help create effective flip chart presentations, this guide contains the basic techniques and helpful hints necessary to produce professional, attention-getting flip charts in a step-by-step procedure format. Five topics are addressed in the guide: (1) eight steps to a successful meeting presentation; (2) advantages of flip chart…

This guide is designed to assist adult educators who are also first-time practitioner-researchers. It is organized in three parts. Part 1 is an introduction to practitioner research. The following steps of designing and conducting a research project are examined in a section on strategies and methods: identify a research question, collect data,…

A collection of Western Regional Center newsletter articles and workshop materials on evaluating alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention programs, this notebook is a revised, condensed version of a 1990 compilation. Aimed at helping beginners in program evaluation start their own notebooks, this compilation contains the following sections: (1)…

This report, part of a project called "Redesigning Higher Education", argues that a set of fundamental changes underlies the growing number of critical difficulties faced by higher education in the United States. It finds the governance structures of American higher education inadequate to deal with a changing and increasingly cost-conscious…

This handbook is designed to help Utah school districts compile and report pertinent information to their respective publics, in compliance with the provisions of House Bill 170, which requires districts to prepare annual district reports. Following the introduction, suggestions are presented for the content, information sources, and reporting…

The Library of Michigan administers the Public Library Personnel Certification Program for Michigan. This handbook clarifies the certification guidelines and terminology used by the Library of Michigan staff and explains the procedures to be used by public libraries. Information on the following is provided: the certification program;…

This publication, intended for administrators and technology planning teams in a wide range of educational settings, presents a set of guiding questions for technology planning that is both supported by current research and found in exemplary technology plans. The guide will help technology planning teams to start and guide a technology planning…

In 1994, Congress passed the Healthy Meals for Healthy Americans Act, requiring that Child Nutrition Programs comply with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and meet nutrient standards. In 1995, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued new regulations to define how the Dietary Guidelines would be applied to school meals, called the…

Lead levels in school drinking water merit special concern because children are more at risk than adults from exposure to lead. This manual provides ways in which school officials can minimize this risk. It assists administrators by providing: (1) general information on the significance of lead in school drinking water and its effects on children;…

There is a high rate of children's injuries on America's playgrounds. This report examines this issue and provides guidance on how to make playgrounds safer and more fun for children, and procedures for performing an initial analysis of the safety of a local playground using a playground safety checklist. Additionally, it provides a step-by-step…

This paper presents two types of approaches to media selection--rational-choice approaches and social-influence approaches. It is argued that designers should combine the two types of approaches in a bottom-up/top-down media-selection process. As examples of the two types of approaches, two conceptual frameworks are described--task/media fit and…