This article is about how the West Boca Raton Community High School's Culinary Arts Academy achieved national model status as it works to prepare the next generation of culinary artists. The culinary academy, established in 2004, adopted national standards that have served as a foundation for its excellence. In November 2007, the National Career…

Quality assurance in higher education has a bearing on the policies, systems and processes directed at ensuring the quality of education provision in an institution (HEQC 1996, 14). To ensure a striving for excellence in academic programmes in a Faculty, to determine the extent to which this striving is achieved and to promote development and…

This chapter examines how factors both internal and external to Cooperative Extension have influenced its commitment and capability to assess the quality and impact of its programs. The authors begin by documenting how the nature of Extension programming has changed dramatically in response to societal needs over the course of the organization's…

The contemporary college or university campus is a complex and dynamic environment that requires students to navigate myriad institutional processes. College preparedness is not simply a matter of being academically ready for postsecondary-level work, but also requires that students have a procedural knowledge of other university processes--what…

This article describes a consulting project with an advocacy organization to raise cigarette excise taxes in Kentucky and to improve public health in the state. We describe the theoretical underpinnings of the project, the client, and our consultation process, objectives, products, and results.

The current study examines the inherent challenges of the wide-scale implementation and replication of program models. Using the Healthy Family America (HFA) program model, the study reviews the adaptation/adoption debate and highlights the ways in which program adoption and program adaptation could coexist to facilitate successful program…

School choice is one of the most frequent recommendations for education reform in the United States today. Unfortunately, the debates are hindered by the lack of a common taxonomy or framework for discussing and evaluating the wide variety of school choice programs available in the United States. Furthermore, there is little information on the…

While educational program evaluation has become more important in recent years because of increasing governmental demands for accountability, little is known about the development of and issues in regard to this topic in the Asia-Pacific region. The findings from a Delphi study conducted in a number of relevant countries are provided in this…

This paper synthesizes the existing literature on stakeholder involvement in program evaluation, drawing a basic distinction between deep involvement of a few versus less active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders. The paper then comments on the case studies described in this special issue and integrates them with previously published…

This paper suggests a particular question that higher education researchers might ask: "Do educational programs use teaching methods that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable?" It further proposes that program evaluation research (PER) can be used to answer the question. Consideration is given to: a) program…

The overall purpose of the present study was to examine whether an intervention program (50 weeks), modeled as training in accordance with the developmental course of private speech (from audible private speech to silent inner speech), itself would add positively to the development of mathematical competence. The sample comprised two comparable…

This excerpt from the opening plenary asks evaluators to consider two questions regarding learning and evaluation: (a) How do evaluators know if, how, when, and what people are learning during an evaluation? and (b) In what ways can evaluation be a learning experience? To answer the first question, evaluators can apply the commonplaces of…

Syntheses of research on educational programs have taken on increasing policy importance. Procedures for performing such syntheses must therefore produce reliable, unbiased, and meaningful information on the strength of evidence behind each program. Because evaluations of any given program are few in number, syntheses of program evaluations must…

The study presents an evaluation of the SI program in five engineering programs within the Faculty of Engineering (LTH) based on data from questionnaires to SI participants and SI-Leaders, credits taken by the students during the first year, and average grade data from high school for the first year students. The results show that participation in…

The paper aims to analyse several scientific approaches how to evaluate, implement or choose learning content and software suitable for personalised users/learners needs. Learning objects metadata customisation method as well as the Method of multiple criteria evaluation and optimisation of learning software represented by the experts' additive…