Describes Personal Application Form (PAF) as being potentially far more important to college admission decision making than Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Considers why PAF fails to be a high profile admission term and remains unrecognized by many applicants and college counselors. Argues that insufficient time goes into application writing.…

Discusses the special qualities of Quill and Scroll Society's evaluation service for student newspapers, which includes requiring advisers and staffs to analyze their own publications. (SR)

Describes the Southern Interscholastic Press Association's (SIPA) evaluation service for student publications. (SR)

Ways are discussed for making faculty assessment an integral part of a department. Suggestions relate to developing career plans, specifying goals, identifying skills, conducting regular reviews, and locating assessment within the departmental and institutional culture. Guidelines and procedures are illustrated with sample letters and third-year…

Describes the development of a method for the automatic identification of sublanguage vocabulary words as they occur in abstracts. Highlights include research relating to sublanguages and their vocabulary; domain terms; evaluation criteria, including recall and precision; and implications for natural language processing and information retrieval.…

Reviews development of the Leader Attributes Inventory and its use in evaluating 10 leadership development programs for vocational graduate students and 7 for inservice personnel. Participant satisfaction and the development and use of leadership attributes are discussed. (SK)

Provides guidelines for Head Start teachers and administrators to determine the utility of classroom rules. Notes that, although some rules are necessary to maintain classroom discipline and a healthy learning environment, others may serve no useful purpose and actually hinder learning opportunities. Lists 10 points to consider when evaluating a…

Evaluation of the National League for Nursing's 1991 Criteria for Baccalaureate and Higher Degree Programs using Huebner's value frameworks (technical, scientific, political, esthetic, ethical) finds the values incorporated to some degree. The new criteria shift power in curriculum design to individual nursing units, allowing adoption of…

Understanding the effects of testing on students is critically important in the face of an inexorable movement toward a national testing program. Proponents thus far have stressed only the positive effects; neither the harmful effects on low-achieving students nor the program's costs and benefits have been appropriately discussed. This article…

Describes the evaluation of a new model for software evaluation that emphasizes the collection of student performance data to determine the extent to which students learn the knowledge a software package intends to teach. Discussion covers the results of two studies, evaluation criteria and methods, evaluator subjectivity in decision making,…

Sees universal adoption of master's degree in rehabilitation counseling as hiring criterion requiring its validation in relation to job performance. Proposes large-scale validation study involving state-federal vocational rehabilitation agencies that would make use of extensive existing vocational rehabilitation database, and relate type and level…

A tongue-in-cheek look at methods used for curriculum development by many colleges and universities compares the process to two others: destruction of trees and trial by ordeal. Forests are destroyed to produce large quantities of paper for printing of curricula in many versions, followed by Kafkaesque committee scrutiny. (MSE)

Discusses the use of entrance tests to admit students to mass communication programs. Advocates finding out precisely what an entrance test measures, and whether it matches what the curriculum demands of students. Recommends two essay tests that evaluate writing skill better than an objective test. (SR)

Describes a Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis Approach for the selection of personal computers that combines the capabilities of Analytic Hierarchy Process and Integer Goal Programing. An example of how decision makers can use this approach to determine what kind of personal computers and how many of each type to purchase is given. (nine…

A systematic investigation of the Grice modeling scheme for response time (RT) clarifies fundamental notions about RT modeling. The analysis presented can be used to determine what in a certain RT model constitutes a set of empirically testable assumptions and what is merely an arbitrary choice of mathematical language. (SLD)