Describes an award-winning instructional media center (IMC) at a New Jersey high school. The IMC (library) is the school's hub from 7:15 a.m. to 6 p.m., and has dial-in access. This information-literacy program emphasizes total-quality-management principles, ongoing professional development, teacher support, and information skills instruction.…

Presents a typology of quality-assurance systems for higher education and evaluates the alternatives. Argues that total quality management strategies are best suited to higher education's purpose because the model is internal to the delivery of the service, continuous, and process-oriented, but notes, however, that there are deep, often…

Discusses the applicability of the definition, principles, and underlying strategies of total quality management (TQM) for engineering education. Describes several tools and methods for the implementation of TQM and its suitability for a variety of school activities. Presents a TQM course outline combining lectures, discussions, suggested…

Discusses the use of evaluative techniques to measure outcomes that show the value and worth of librarians and library services. Highlights include quality improvement; evaluating quality; measuring concepts as opposed to concrete variables; meeting users' information needs; measuring intangibles; and measures from total quality management. (LRW)

A survey of 33 continuing education units in Georgia's public colleges/universities showed that four-year colleges are more likely to offer academic credit classes and offer contract courses to business/industry. Community colleges serve a specific region, have more distance education participants, and are more likely to offer credit courses…

Inspired by Deming's work, the superintendent of West Babylon (New York) Schools convened his administrative team to build a consensus about the schools' mission. The vision statement outlines four primary functions: protective care, civic training, personality development, and teaching of knowledge. The district's goal-driven process surmounted…

External and internal forces are driving institutions not only to create departments and positions that specialize in planning, quality improvement, and institutional research but also to link them within a systems context.

Purpose: To analyse the implicit relationships among enabler agents of the European excellence model to serve as a framework for the management and improvement of the quality in higher education institutions. Design/methodology/approach: The hypotheses set out are based on the structure and meaning of the EFQM model and a review of the TQM…

This article features the Family Child Care Home Education Network (FCCHEN), a groundbreaking program operated by the Riverside County Office of Education's Division of Children and Family Services. The FCCHEN is a network of family child care homes located throughout the Coachella Valley that receive funding for subsidized child care through an…

Based on Penn State's popular "Innovation Insights" series, this book brings together in one handy reference nearly a decade of tried and true insights into continuous quality improvements in higher education. Their five-step model for integrating planning, assessment, and improvement moves plans off the shelf and into the weekly and daily…

Organisations are continuously challenged to become more strategic, productive and cost-effective. As a result, quality management has become increasingly important to achieve desired organisational performance outcomes. Quality management considers leadership an important component to implement and sustain quality products and services to…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to demonstrate and evaluate the incorporation of teambuilding training into a graduate course on transition. A total of 33 students in two different sections of the course participated in six exercises focusing on group development and teambuilding and a group simulation. Students provided input about…

In this article, the authors discuss the need for integrative, multidisciplinary courses in value creation. They describe the design and implementation of courses in 2 different schools at the master of business administration (MBA) and undergraduate levels. Both courses involved schematic models in the teaching methodologies, but each emphasized…

W. Edwards Deming called for the transformation to a new style of organizational management based on greater cooperation between managers and employees. This transformation could be achieved by introducing "profound knowledge" into the system. This paper is a presentation outline that was used to introduce the basics of Deming's theory…

Can Total Quality Management (TQM) improve the performance of school systems in meaningful ways? This paper evaluates the soundness of TQM as an improvement program for education by comparing its philosophy and prescriptions with the mounting theoretical and empirical wisdom on introducing and sustaining large-scale organizational change and more…