Change That Abides: A Retrospective Look at Five Community and Family Stengthening Projects and Their Enduring Results

Examines the interactions among funders, grantees, and community groups, and outlines the results of three different types of foundation grants for projects in Savannah, Little Rock, Dayton, Alameda County, and Boston. Includes recommendations

An Applied Research Study on Improving Parental Involvement at a School in Southeastern North Carolina

The purpose of this applied research study was to solve the problem of low parental involvement for school stakeholders at a school in southeastern North Carolina and to formulate a solution to address the problem. The central research question for this study was “How can the problem of low parental involvement be improved at a school located in southeastern North Carolina?” The theoretical framework for this study was comprised of Piaget’s cognitive development theory and Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory. Accordingly, the philosophical assumption that guided this research study was an ontological assumption through the interpretive framework of social constructivism. This study explored factors that impact school-based parental involvement and the supports that are needed to increase parental engagement in school-based events. Using a multimethods approach, qualitative data were collected from a variety of school stakeholders through semi-structured interviews, as well as a focus group interview with educators of the site school. Qualitative data were analyzed using the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method of analysis. A Likert-scale survey instrument was created to gather further information from school stakeholders on how to address the problem of low parental involvement. The quantitative data were recorded and analyzed using tables and descriptive statistics. Using the qualitative and quantitative data collected, an intervention plan was developed to improve parental involvement for the stakeholders at the site school

Agent-Based Team Aiding in a Time Critical Task

In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of agent-based aiding in support of a time-critical team-planning task for teams of both humans and heterogeneous software agents. The team task consists of human subjects playing the role of military commanders and cooperatively planning to move their respective units to a common rendezvous point, given time and resource constraints. The objective of the experiment was to compare the effectiveness of agent-based aiding for individual and team tasks as opposed to the baseline condition of manual route planning. There were two experimental conditions: the Aided condition, where a Route Planning Agent (RPA) finds a least cost plan between the start and rendezvous points for a given composition of force units; and the Baseline condition, where the commanders determine initial routes manually, and receive basic feedback about the route. We demonstrate that the Aided condition provides significantly better assistance for individual route planning and team-based re-planning

Co-operative Education: Linking Education and Employment

Recent growth in community-based services for developmentally disabled persons has highlighted the need for innovative strategies to attract staff to this field. This article will describe how the Young Adult Institute has linked education and employment for students interested in pursuing a recreational career

Beyond Consultation: A New Model for Librarian's Office Hours

Given the many changes in our students and their study and research practices, libraries are finding it necessary to seek new ways to reach these students. The Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created a new model to do so. Librarian's Office Hours are a hybrid of reference and instructional services that fulfill the dual purposes of meeting the needs of term paper research counseling and library workshops. This article discusses the strategies involved in the creation and implementation of this service and examines suggestions for the future of such a service.Ope

Electronic Journals in Business Schools: Legitimacy, Acceptance, and Use

This research provides insight into perceptions regarding electronic journals: a technological innovation in academia. Acceptance of electronic journals among business school faculty has two hurdles to overcome: technological and, more challenging, garnering legitimacy within the academic community. A survey targeted at business school faculty in the United States was conducted investigating faculty perceptions about the acceptance of electronic journals in their academic discipline. The findings suggest that at the time of publication, electronic publications were seen as less desirable than paper counterparts for tenure and review. However, it appears that electronic counterparts of existing journals would maintain their legitimacy from a promotion and tenure perspective, suggesting that the perceived legitimacy of the journal is the critical hurdle to overcome

Survey Says…?: Assessing Interlibrary Loan/Document Delivery Use and Awareness for Responsive Service Delivery

The object of this study is to assess Texas A&M University (TAMU) students/faculty/staff members’ use and awareness of the Libraries’ free document delivery and interlibrary loan service, branded as “Get It For Me.” Since 2010, we have continued to see a decline in new user registrations each year. Previous Get It For Me user surveys conducted in 2003 and 2011 indicated that the overall satisfaction of registered users was high and customer feedback gleaned from these surveys was used to initiate a number of service improvements. But what about the large percentage of the campus community who do not use the Get It For Me service? Are they aware of what this service has to offer? If so, why might they choose not to use it? If they are not aware of the service, might they use it if they knew more about how it can assist them in their scholarly endeavors? Instead of only surveying those customers who have used this service, we invited everyone on TAMU College Station campus to participate in the survey. Promoting the service is a vital component of service delivery