Clear all

17 results found

reorder grid_view

A Tripartite Framework for Leadership Evaluation

March 14, 2013

The Tripartite Framework for Leadership Evaluation provides a comprehensive examination of the leadership evaluation landscape and makes key recommendations about how the field of leadership evaluation should proceed. The chief concern addressed by this working paper is the use of student outcome data as a measurement of leadership effectiveness. A second concern in our work with urban leaders is the absence or surface treatment of race and equity in nearly all evaluation instruments or processes. Finally, we call for an overhaul of the conventional cycle of inquiry, which is based largely on needs analysis and leader deficits, and incomplete use of evidence to support recurring short cycles within the larger yearly cycle of inquiry.

Composing Possibilities: Open Educational Resources and K-12 Music Education

March 1, 2013

Music open educational resources (OER) have the potential to fill gaps in access to instructional materials for K-12 music teachers and learners, and to support teachers and learners as content creators and collaborators in meeting educational goals. This study explores the current state of music OER, the audiences that these resources serve to benefit, and the opportunities and challenges involved in adopting an open approach to the development of music education resources.

WGBH's Teacher's Domain: Producing Open Materials and Engaging Users

October 1, 2008

Launched in 2002 by WGBH, the non-commercial public media service, located in Boston, Massachusetts, Teachers' Domain is an online repository of multimedia open educational resources for use in classrooms and for professional development. As part of its effort to increase the availability of freely accessible resources WGBH has developed content from public media archives into high quality, open educational resources for Teachers' Domain. Using a participatory case study methodology, this report examines WGBH and Teachers' Domain's successes and challenges in 1) converting proprietary content to open content 2) engaging users in content and 3) redesigning the Teacher's Domain site to accommodate new categories of use and tools for teachers and learners of all different backgrounds and activity levels. For OER projects more generally, ongoing research on user behaviors, experiences and perceptions can be a challenging and resource-intense process; however, by assessing and building data collection mechanisms and research questions into organizational practices, knowledge and learnings can be cultivated to inform how users are best supported, as well as to inform continuous improvement for the projects overall.

Curriki: Facilitating Use and User Engagement Around Open Educational Resources

October 1, 2008

Through interviews with the Curriki management team, analysis of internal documents,observations of internal user data collection practices, and a survey and interviews with Curriki users, the Curriki case study explored use patterns and user perceptions of the site, its resources and tools. The specific questions addressed include: 1) how often and why users are coming to Curriki; 2) how they use and engage around the Curriki site, its tools and its resources; and 3) what factors help or hinder engagement and use. The goal of this case study has been to develop an understanding of the mechanisms and processes that can help to attract and sustain users over time, and to facilitate and enhance their use, reuse and content contribution experiences.

Mission 2007 Training Commons: Developing a Living Curriculum for Telecentre Workers in India

October 1, 2008

Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre was formed to establish telecentres offering shared access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) in each of India's 600,000 villages by the year 2007. The telecentres would support community development and poverty reduction, and would be run by managers trained in specific skill sets that would allow them to serve the diverse needs of the communities they support. The Mission 2007 Training Commons initiative, a collaborative, open content approach drawing on existing trainer expertise, was established to develop resources that could support trainers through a 'living curriculum': materials that were free, accessible online, and easily adapted. The primary objective of the Training Commons case study was to understand and document the practices, processes, successes, and challenges of the partnership and the content development, and to assess the overall impact on stakeholders. Several key learnings were identified that hold relevance to other OER projects, including 1) the role of culture in securing and maintaining open content partnerships, 2) the importance of workflow creation and supports and 3) incorporating user feedback early on to facilitate localization of content and differentiation of content among key types of users; resulting in content that is adaptable and draws on the expertise of multiple partners and individuals.

CurriculumNet: Creating Freely Available Curriculum Materials to Meet Uganda's Growing Student Population

September 30, 2008

The National Curriculum Development Center (NCDC), an office under the Ugandan government's Ministry of Education and Sports has using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to assist in addressing the curriculum needs of the growing student population in both rural and urban schools in Uganda. With funding from the Canadian International Development and Research Centre (IDRC), the NCDC developed CurriculumNet, the goal of which has been to develop, test, and integrate ICT-based instructional materials and teaching into existing Ugandan curriculum. This report presents key practices and learnings of the CurriculumNet project in terms of its collaborative curriculum development process, as well as the opportunities and challenges faced by the project overall. Through analysis of the projects internal documentation, as well as interviews with the CurriculumNet project leader, this report documents how the project developed and disseminated content to meet curriculum needs while also addressing funding and infrastructure related challenges.

Building Open Educational Resources from the Ground Up: South Africa's Free High School Science Texts

October 1, 2007

This paper presents a case study of the development of the South African project Free High School Science Texts (FHSST), an initiative to develop a free high school science text for all teachers and learners in South Africa. The goals of the case study were two-fold: to examine and analyze the practices associated with the successes and challenges encountered by FHSST; and to encourage a participatory, analytical process that will assist other open education projects in thinking about and sharing their practices, processes, and strategies. Beyond its implications for South African education, the FHSST project can serve as a model for peer production of open content, offering insights into planning and decision making around 1) recruiting volunteers; 2) sustaining their participation; 3) using technology to create effective workflow; 4) conducting hackathons; and 5) facilitating teacher trials. Findings from this study offers insights into overall approaches and goals that may prove instrumental across open education projects, serving as a reference for development of assessment tools and resources that may assist open education projects in tracking, sharing, and advancing their learnings and success.

Creating, Doing, and Sustaining OER: Lessons from Six Open Educational Resource Projects

September 15, 2007

The development of free-to-use open educational resources (OER) has generated a dynamic field of widespread interest and study regarding methods for creating and sustaining OER. To help foster a thriving OER movement with potential for knowledge-sharing across program, organizational and national boundaries, the Institute for Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), developed and conducted case study research programs in collaboration with six OER projects from around the world. Embodying a range of challenges and opportunities among a diverse set of OER projects, the case studies intended to track, analyze and share key developments in the creation, use and reuse of OER. The specific cases include: CurriculumNet, Curriki, Free High School Science Texts (FHSST), Training Commons, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), and Teachers' Domain.

The Governors Speak 2007: A Report on the State-of-the-State Addresses of the Nation's and U.S. Territories' Governors

April 12, 2007

As improved economic conditions and higher state revenues offer governors an opportunity to invest in long-term priorities, most are focusing action on strengthening their state's prospects for long-term economic growth, according to the 2007 state-of-the-state addresses. For most of this new century, state budgets have struggled to keep pace with education and health care spending. However, improved economic conditions are enabling governors to pursue bolder initiatives that focus on building their state's innovation economy and knowledge-based enterprises.

The Governors Speak 2006: A Report on the State-of-the-State Addresses of the Nation's Governors

March 1, 2006

As most states continue to face improved economic and budget conditions in 2006, governors are taking the opportunity to press forward in advancing their priorities for state development and investment. According to their 2006 state-of-the-state addresses, governors' priorities this year include education (particularly teacher quality and high school reform), health care (particularly health and wellness issues), economic development and vitality, and the effective management and preservation of natural resources for economic and quality-of-life purposes. Providing tax incentives and tax relief for businesses and residents also emerged as very high on governors' agendas.

An Anatomy of School System Improvement: Performance-Driven Practices in Urban School Districts

April 1, 2005

"Anatomy of School System Improvement: Performance-Driven Practices in Urban School Districts" is the first report in a three-year effort to define how educators are beginning to embrace performance-driven practices in order to transform public education systems into learning organizations. We examine how this process of change is unfolding in 28 medium and large urban school systems, and illuminate the major barriers and needs that educators and school systems must overcome in order to create true performance-driven organizations.

Accountability and Information Practices in the California Community Colleges: Toward Effective Use of Information in Decision-Making

April 1, 2005

A comprehensive assessment of the effects of performance-based funding is not yet available. Yet according to early national survey results, the impact of performance-based funding on overall campus outcomes has been moderate at best (Burke and Minassians, 2002). These national findings may mirror experiences within California. In 1998, the State of California and the California Community Colleges inaugurated a performance-based funding program called the Partnership for Excellence (PFE). The program launch represented a commitment by the state legislature to earmark additional funding for the community colleges, in exchange for the colleges' agreement to develop, track, and achieve, by 2005, system-wide performance goals to improve student learning and success.Through 2000-01, the state appropriation to the community colleges for the PFE program was allocated by the Chancellor's Office to local college districts based on enrollment. There were conditions in place for moving from an enrollment-based to a more performance-driven formula, but before those conditions were fully triggered, the program was not re-funded. The Legislative Analyst's Office issued an analysis that was critical of the effects of the PFE program on system performance in the community colleges. In its analysis of the 2002-03 state budget, it stated that the program was "failing to meet objectives" and that the measurement of results were "hindered by methodological disagreement and conceptual vagueness" (Legislative Analyst's Office, 2002).During the time period when the Partnership for Excellence (PFE) program was still being funded by the Legislature, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME) conducted two district-wide studies, representing eleven colleges, that examined the needs and patterns of data and information access, sharing, and use in two community college districts in California. As part of these studies, a wide range of administrators, faculty, and staff were interviewed about their use of information in decision-making on campus. Given the state's continuing interest in developing an accountability system for the California Community Colleges (Office of the Chancellor, 2005), these studies provide illuminating insights into the complex relationship between external mandates for accountability and internal practices of information and knowledge retrieval, use, and management at the district level.