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This paper examines how the process of making higher education choices in the United States--whether to enter higher education, attend a particular college, or follow a particular path through college--produces and legitimates social inequality. The paper's central thesis is that a societal regime of many choices--while serving individual freedom and producing social well-being--"produces" societal inequality in a way that obscures that process of social reproduction for virtually all who participate in that choice regime. Students often make choices that do not serve their interests as well as they might wish, particularly if students are faced with many choices and do not have adequate information. The incidence of those suboptimal choices is not random but is socially stratified. It is higher for less advantaged people, and unequal provision of good information plays a crucial role in producing those socially stratified suboptimal choices. Secondly, the provision of many choices "legitimates" social inequality. Seemingly offered many choices in life, both the fortunate and unfortunate in society come to feel that much of the inequality they experience is due to their own actions and therefore is legitimate. The paper concludes by offering various prescriptions for reducing the socially stratifying impacts and ideological consequences of a high-choice regime. It lays out how we could more equally distribute high-quality information, nudge students toward better choice making, reduce the costs to students of suboptimal choices, and mitigate blaming self and others by demystifying the nature of choice. In making these arguments, this paper draws on the research literature in sociology of education, behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, and social psychology of inequality.

The uncertainty and disruption imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic are so extensive that they will far outlast the pandemic itself. It is difficult to scale leadership development when staff is constantly shifting and leaders are struggling just to keep up with the day-to-day challenges of their work and personal lives. HR and L&D (learning and development) professionals need tools and solutions that allow them to access research-backed content and deliver transformational development experiences across the enterprise. A strong leadership development partner can stay on top of the latest research and trends, anticipate needs, and help pivot quickly to scale large organizational changes in the timeframe needed. The key to successfully scaling leadership development is devising a strategy at the outset. Once the strategy is secured, it is imperative to have the processes and the talent in place to support the initiative and to be able to execute rapidly. When scaling leadership development, it's essential to focus on the following 3 principles presented in this white paper: (1) PLAN Your Leadership Strategy; (2) PROVIDE Access to Relevant & Flexible Leadership Content; and (3) LEVERAGE Internal and External Talent.

Family and social networks are widely believed to influence important life decisions but identifying their causal effects is notoriously difficult. Using admissions thresholds that directly affect older but not younger siblings' college options, we present evidence from the United States, Chile, Sweden and Croatia that older siblings' college and major choices can significantly influence their younger siblings' college and major choices. On the extensive margin, an older sibling's enrollment in a better college increases a younger sibling's probability of enrolling in college at all, especially for families with low predicted probabilities of enrollment. On the intensive margin, an older sibling's choice of college or major increases the probability that a younger sibling applies to and enrolls in that same college or major. Spillovers in major choice are stronger when older siblings enroll and succeed in more selective and higher-earning majors. The observed spillovers are not well-explained by price, income, proximity or legacy effects, but are most consistent with older siblings transmitting otherwise unavailable information about the college experience and its potential returns. The importance of such personally salient information may partly explain persistent differences in college-going rates by geography, income, and other determinants of social networks.

Movement to fully open-access electronic scholarly publication has been hampered by the conflicting interests of universities, private publishers, researchers themselves, and those who fund research. The situation interacts strongly with traditions regarding peer review and the ways in which researchers establish stature within their fields. Progress to date has led to seemingly awkward and probably transient systems of dual publication or dual publication status, including green, gold, and hybrid open access. There are also efforts to establish pay-to-publish as the standard model to replace pay-to-read. The ultimate situation should be immediate open-access electronic posting of results of all research, with pre-posting peer reviews solicited by the author rather than a journal editor, following any institutional policies regarding the type and amount of pre-publication peer review. There could then also be publications and/or web sites that harvest among posted articles selectively for further attention and may be fee-based, but open-access would be the primary and recognized form of publication. There are several things that research universities can do to encourage this transition. One is to provide or arrange for services to facilitate preparation and posting of articles and books in open-access repositories. Another is to make the contents of repositories readily discoverable in searches. The provost should be a central actor toward these ends, since faculty matters, the library, institutional publishing services, and often computing typically report to the provost. A provost can encourage policies for reviews of faculty members that do not consider pre-publication peer reviews and measures of journal quality and which instead give more attention to cumulative and integrated accomplishments than to individual papers. Shared governance provides useful ways of working with the faculty to promote recognition of the value of online, open-access publication. Engaging the interests and support of the most intellectually respected and senior faculty members can be particularly helpful.

It is timely to take stock of the wellbeing of educational research in Aotearoa New Zealand. The major Education Work Programme 2021 includes a Research, Evaluation and Development Strategy. Te Ara Paerangi--Future Pathways Green Paper has launched a major review of the design of public funding for research institutions and for research taking place in tertiary and other education institutions. This paper canvasses the recent history and current landscape of educational research funding and support in Aotearoa New Zealand. It draws on the author's extensive experience in this field, and the need to test the author's growing unease that educational research in this country is, overall, not in good shape.

Effective education at the tertiary level is one of the key conditions for the development of modern economies; it also has a substantial impact on social development. Nowadays, higher education institutions all over the world are facing numerous challenges, some of them global (e.g. funding), others local (e.g. demographic trends). Universities are seeking new ways of dealing with the challenges; however, they often resort to methods that seem to do more harm than good by moving the emphasis from long-term objectives to short-term ones. In marketing literature, a new concept of Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) is proposed as an alternative approach to traditional and outdated marketing theories applied to the higher education sector. Its foundational premise of value co-creation seems to be of particular relevance here as it assumes that various groups of actors jointly create the academic experience. This paper focuses on the higher education sector in Poland and investigates the attitudes of Polish students towards value co-creation and their consequences for the academic experience. The study leads to the identification of value co-creation styles among students reflected by five segments: Maximalists, Minimalists, the Scrupulous, the Networking-Oriented and the Intellectuals and presents their detailed characteristics.

Alternative Digital Credentials (ADCs) will significantly transform the relationship between higher education institutions and society. By providing fully digital, workplace-relevant, and information-rich records of an individual's skills and competencies, ADCs will render traditional university transcripts increasingly irrelevant and obsolete. Universities and colleges that to not adopt in some measure the ADC movement will begin to experience a slow decline in market position and patron support. Current usage of ADCs is emerging rapidly in the marketplace and is supported by standard-setting efforts and grant funding. Usage is accelerating due to the inadequacy of the traditional transcription systems, accrediting agency requirements, demographic shifts in learning preferences, open education, and hiring practices, among others. Institutions seeking to enter the ADC movement face challenges including, 1) establishing criteria for the issuance of ADCs, 2) designing icons to represent their ADCs, 3) determining the content disclosed in the ADC, 4) selecting a method (vendor) for implementing ADCs, and 5) considering the pace of technology and the immediate future of the ADC movement, including the advent of blockchain technology. This paper provides a rationale and pathway for the institutional adoption of ADCs.

Economic information may close aspiration disparities for postsecondary education across socio-economic, ethnic and partisan divides. In 2017, we estimated impacts of information on such disparities by means of a survey experiment administered to a nationally representative sample of 4,214 adults. A baseline group was asked whether they preferred a four-year degree, a two-year degree, or no further education for their oldest child under the age of eighteen (or on the option they would prefer if they had one). Before three other randomly selected segments of our sample were asked the same question, they were given either information about (1) both net costs and returns; (2) net costs; or (3) returns to a two-year and four-year degree. Information about both costs and returns did not reduce SES disparities but did affect ethnic and partisan divides. The findings suggest that reductions in socioeconomic inequalities in educational opportunity will require more than simple changes in the dissemination of information aimed at altering economic cost-benefit calculations. Sustained effort that mitigates deeper-seated cultural and social barriers seems necessary.

Many first-time community college entrants aspire to earn a bachelor's degree, but few do. To transfer, students often must overcome information constraints to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and conflicting requirements. For a sample of 20 Texas community colleges, we reviewed college websites, assessing the ease of access and usefulness of online transfer information, and spoke to key transfer personnel about the information provided to students. We used a qualitative case study approach to triangulate findings from our data sources. Approximately two thirds of colleges in the sample fell below the highest standard on our rubric for either ease of access or usefulness, indicating room for improvement at most institutions. Many personnel we interviewed recognized the strengths and limitations of their college's online information, though several were ambivalent regarding the need for improving online transfer information, arguing that the availability of online information alone is insufficient for successful transfer and not as important as face-to-face advising. Our research illustrates the need for colleges to develop and update their online information with care, determining which information students need to transfer (including transfer guides for partner programs/colleges), how students might search for that information, and ensuring that necessary transfer information is available and up-to-date. The framework provided by our rubric may guide institutions in the evaluation of their online transfer information.

The digital revolution and automation are accelerating changes in the labour market and in workplace skills, changes that are further affected by fluctuations in international and regional economic cycles and employment opportunity. These factors pose a universal policy challenge for all advanced economies and governments. In the workplace, people seek to acquire contemporary and relevant skills to gain employment and retain transferable skills to maintain employment. The central purpose of this paper is to investigate how other nations or regions are dealing with these issues. What approaches are they taking to understanding the mix and dynamics of the skills attained by individuals and, more broadly, the totality of skills that in aggregate constitute a highly capable and adaptable labour force, one that supports firm viability and greater national productivity. This research has examined a range of initiatives and approaches being developed or in use in selected countries, including the United States, Singapore and New Zealand, and agencies/organisations; for example, the European Commission and the Skills for the Information Age Foundation. In doing so, it showcases the good practices used to ensure that occupational-level skills information remains current and widely accessible. [For "Identifying Work Skills: International Case Summaries. Support Document," see ED579875.]

What was the role of imperfect local information in the growth, gender gap, and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) major selection of early 20th century American universities? In order to examine pre-1950 American higher education, this study constructs four rich panel datasets covering most students, high school teachers, and doctors in the state of California between 1893 and 1946 using recently-digitized administrative and commercial directories. Students attending large California universities came from more than 600 California towns by 1910, with substantial geographic heterogeneity in female participation and STEM major selection. About 43 percent of university students in 1900 were women, and the number of women attending these universities increased by more than 500 percent between 1900 and 1940. Meanwhile, the number of California towns with female high school physics or chemistry teachers doubled between 1903 and 1923, while the proportion of towns with a female doctor increased from 20 to 26 percent (adding almost 60 towns) during the same period. Event study regression analysis shows that towns became 9-15 percentage points more likely to send at least one female student to the institutions examined in this study after the arrival of their first female high school physics or chemistry teacher or female doctor, implying a 2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of young women's college attendance, but that the arrival of female STEM teachers decreases the likelihood of a town's sending a male STEM student to university by 10 percentage points. This study establishes the role of limited information and social networks in early 20th century educational choices, and has implications for both historical growth accounting and contemporary educational practices in developing economies. It also provides a window into the tremendous socioeconomic mobility afforded by California's commitment to mass higher education. This is the first of several planned studies that are part of the new UC Cliometric History Project based as CSHE in anticipation of UC's 150th anniversary.

The focus of this working paper is on how secondary schools can optimise young people's preparation for adult employment at a time of extreme labour market turbulence. By reviewing academic analysis of national longitudinal datasets, it is possible to identify indicators of comparative adult success. How teenagers: (1) think about their futures in work; and what they do to (2) explore; and (3) experience workplaces within and outside of schools is consistently associated with better than expected employment outcomes in adulthood. Data-driven career guidance will take such indicators into account within delivery. Analysis of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 illustrates substantial variation in the extent of such career readiness between and within countries. Variation in career readiness is particularly associated with disadvantage. More effective education systems will ensure schools systematically address inequalities in teenage access to information and support in preparing for working life.

The paper investigates two -- often disconnected -- policy questions: how can we scale the use of evidence in teaching practice, and how can we generate and scale innovation? Both questions necessitate understanding how teachers and schools connect with each other, and with other organisations and professionals. The paper thus explores the role of networks in scaling evidence and innovation through a review of literature and a number of short case descriptions. Through the lens of networks, the analysis shows how the mobilisation, construction and diffusion of knowledge are of central importance in both policy issues. It suggests that scaling evidence and innovation should be treated as one ecosystem, in which mechanisms that allow effectively blending research and practical knowledge are key. Further, the paper proposes a framework for studying knowledge dynamics in networks to better understand how their context, characteristics and devices can contribute to facilitate these dynamics.

Students who have mastered the ability to create their own learning environments have an advantage over students who rely on traditional environments to structure their learning. Students who understand how to use new tools for school learning typically do not pick up these skills at school--they learn from the habits of parents and peers who work in knowledge fields (Watkins, 2013). Widespread access to many innovations in the digital world has great promise in engaging all students in 21st century learning, but without the active role of schools to remediate the class distinctions, the participation gap will continue to widen in ways that reflect social inequalities. This paper addresses the gap between the potential of new media tools for transforming learning in and out of schools and the school commitment to technologies that support testing and accountability. The authors argue that the gap between schools and digital worlds can be "intentionally bridged" if affordances of widely used new media environments and tools, such as makerspaces, video games, citizen science, fantasy sports and youth media arts organizations are matched with needs that traditional schools often struggle to meet. Matching affordances with needs means that educators do not have to invent entirely new approaches to teaching and learning. Rather, they can leverage learning practices widely used outside schools to answer questions raised by teachers and learners in schools. The authors propose the idea of "participatory culture" as a robust model for how to think about the emerging practices of learning in digital media spaces. The participatory culture framework helps to make sense of learning in and out of schools, and points toward viable paths to integrate the best of new media experience into contemporary school design.

Governments recognise that careers guidance, underpinned by accurate labour market information, can help learners make post-secondary education choices that match their interests, aptitudes and abilities, and lead to rewarding employment. For this reason, they have invested in building linked education/employment information systems and other information resources which are displayed on websites targeted to learners and their families. However, researchers and governments agree that these efforts are often ineffective in informing learners' decisions -- access to information is not sufficient to provide effective support to student choice. Drawing upon the insights of behavioural economics, this paper examines how learners access and use information, and what this implies for the design of public study and career choice websites that aim to effectively support student choice. The report also takes stock of the career guidance websites in use in the majority of OECD countries, and sets out to provide actionable advice for policy makers to guide the design of effective information policy levers that support student choice.

Advanced information, communication, computation and collaboration technologies, known as "cyberinfrastructure," have become essential elements for research, education, and innovation in the 21st century. A major challenge confronting the United States today is how to ensure that all colleges and universities, including those that have not traditionally benefited from leading-edge research infrastructure, can participate seamlessly in national and multinational cyberinfrastructure-enabled efforts. The minority-serving-institution community has unique expertise, knowledge, and resources to share. Western leaders from the fields of science, education and cyberinfrastructure recognize an urgent need for action. Participants in the 2006 "Lariat Summit on Minority Institutions and Cyberinfrastructure in the West" gathered in Bozeman, Montana to develop strategies and recommendations for connecting minority-serving institutions in the West to national advanced cyberinfrastructure. This document is a first step towards developing both the will and the resources to ensure that minority-serving institutions are among the "connected" institutions in the Western states of Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, and Washington. (Contains 2 figures and 11 endnotes.) [Financial support for this white paper was provided by the University of Washington, Internet2, and the Pacific Northwest Gigapop.]

American universities, we are often told, are the best in the world. Rankings of schools worldwide done by organizations in both China and Great Britain consistently are dominated by U.S. institutions. More than half of the top 100 schools (and eight of the top 10) in the Shanghai rankings, for example, are American schools. A huge portion of Nobel Prize award winners are individuals with close associations with American universities. Foreign students flock to America to derive the benefits of U.S. institutions of higher education. College graduates, on average, command significant pay premiums over those with lesser education. On the surface, it seems like we have a great high education system that works beautifully. But below the surface, there are a large number of flaws in the system. In this paper, the author addresses what can be called the "12 inconvenient truths about American higher education." These truths are: (1) High Costs; (2) Not Engine for Growth; (3) College Degrees Don't Guarantee Success; (4) College Students Work and Learn Little, Party Hard; (5) Undergraduate Students Are Often Neglected; (6) Most Students Do Not Graduate On Time; (7) Colleges Hide Vital Information from Consumers; (8) Freedom of Expression Is Curtailed; (9) Colleges Are Not a Force for Income Equality; (10) Colleges Are Run to Benefit Staff, Not Students; (11) Federal Student Financial Aid Doesn't Work; and (12) Intercollegiate Athletics Is Costly and Corrupt. (Contains 2 tables, 5 figures, and 14 notes.)

It is clear that families and communities play key roles in student achievement and school improvement efforts. Across the nation, states are leading initiatives to improve communication and engagement with these stakeholders through effective data sharing. Key points highlighted in this brief include: (1) Maintaining close ties with family and community is recognized as one of five critical supports for school improvement (Bryk, 2010); (2) Data sharing can help parents and families understand how their children are performing and where gaps exist in student achievement as well as guide them in taking appropriate action to support academic success (The Education Trust, 2004); and (3) Decision makers should consider taking steps to understand the needs, wants, barriers, and motivations of stakeholders; develop community or family action plans; create materials that are customized for recipients; and incorporate social marketing concepts into data dissemination practices (National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities, 2011; National Center for the Dissemination of Disability Research, 2001; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2009). A list of resources is provided.

Does public information about school quality lead parents to sort their children out of schools with relatively poor performance? Use of this exit option in response to information about school quality has the potential to indirectly foster school responsiveness to quality concerns. To determine whether this information affects student exit, I use a regression discontinuity design to examine the effect of school grades on exit. Results indicate that parents do not seem to respond to information about school quality generally and, thus, cast doubt on the effectiveness of indirect accountability to promote educational improvement. However, there is limited evidence that particularly poor school performance accompanied by institutional mechanisms for school choice promote student sorting away from low-quality schools. (Contains 12 figures, 9 tables, and 11 footnotes.) [Funding for this paper was provided by the National Science Foundation's IGERT program.]

Digital textbooks will soon be part of every classroom in the United States. This trend accompanies an imperative for schools to facilitate 21st century learning in which educators prepare students to learn and live productively in a global society where accurate and current information is a meaningful part of everyday learning. As technology and the Internet have gained presence in classrooms, instructional materials and activities have become digitally rich. The use of digital textbooks is rapidly gaining ground in education. While colleges and universities have moved headlong into digital textbooks as a means to reduce costs for students, K-12 education is venturing cautiously, but steadily, into using digital textbooks. State laws, many of which have been rewritten to include digital content as an acceptable use of state textbook funding, will serve as catalysts that spur the transition to digital textbooks School librarians can provide school-wide leadership to assist students, teachers, and parent concerns when transitioning to digital textbooks. Working in collaboration with teachers, school librarians promote comprehension through questioning, clarifying, seeking meaning, and discussion. Digital textbooks may represent a way to continue advocacy for the importance of reading as well as for the school librarian's leadership role in technology integration. (Contains 2 tables.) [This report was produced by the Florida State University PALM (Partnerships Advancing Library Media) Center.]

For Americans to engage in a global information society, it is critical that they have access to high-speed, high-bandwidth Internet, meaning broadband. Network connectivity opens up a wealth of possibilities to K-12 educators. While it has the potential to result in fundamental changes in teaching methods, it can definitely be used to enhance already effective teaching methods. However, schools must have confidence in their network infrastructure before network connectivity will be integrated into the classroom. Networks must be reliable and quick; and, if they do not function, as expected and technical support is not readily available, then educators will not use them. Schools face challenges to the integration of broadband in teaching and learning in the areas of access, skills, policy, and motivation. Last mile support is essential and all stakeholders must work together to address the main issues facing the improvement of broadband in schools. A solution to these situations is on-site support to streamline and enable effective use of broadband-enabled technology. For most schools, the school librarian, in their roles as school leaders, can expertly direct this "last mile" implementation by providing the technology coordination, support, and leadership necessary to address access issues from desktop to district. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.) [This report was produced by the Florida State University PALM (Partnerships Advancing Library Media) Center. Support for this paper was provided by Gale Cengage Learning.]

This paper provides a synthesis of the literature on and recent trends in new technologies and its effect on 21st century children (0-18 years old). It begins by providing an overview of recent trends in the access and use of new technologies as well as a summary of online opportunities and risks. It then explores a variety of factors, including economic, social and cultural status which underlie these trends and lead to online and offline inequalities. Building digital resilience is an important skill for 21st century children. Effective strategies to accomplish this include encouragement of active rather than passive Internet use, e-safety in the school curriculum, and teacher and parental Information and Communication Technology (ICT) support. A focus on younger children (primary school or younger) and the effects of new emerging technologies would be helpful for future research.

Scholarly communication is a multi-relationship topic that is interconnected to various fields and disciplines. Efforts of faculty members, librarians, publishers, information specialists, information technologists and archivists have to be combined together in order to establish and create scholarly communication in any society. In addition of being a multi-relation topic, scholarly communication can be considered an important criterion in assessing and evaluating higher education systems in different countries. Excellent higher education systems have excellent scholarly communications systems, and fair or moderate higher education systems have moderate or fair scholarly communication systems and so on. Therefore, one can assume that there is a positive and a strong relationship between the level of scholarly communication in a certain country and the type of that country, where advanced countries have advanced scholarly communication systems, and poor or developing countries have poor or weak scholarly communication systems. The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast higher education systems in technology-based societies and paper-based societies. (Contains 2 footnotes.)

The literature addressing how family and community involvement impacts a culture of college and career readiness suggests there is a positive association for certain types of involvement. Providing support and encouragement, as well as assisting with planning, increases the probability of attending and graduating from college. Key points include: (1) Make efforts to include families in postsecondary planning; (2) Provide information to support postsecondary planning throughout a student's education; (3) Provide information to support postsecondary planning throughout a student's education; and (4) Address linguistic and cultural barriers, parental time issues, and other factors across populations that are traditionally underrepresented in institutions of higher education. Appended are: (1) Suggested Strategies for Family and Community Involvement; and (2) Profiles of Reported Successful School, District, or State Programs. A list of references and additional resources is provided.

Growing concerns about low awareness and take-up rates for government support programs like financial aid for college have recently spurred calls to simplify the application process and enhance visibility. However, little research has been done to determine whether such reforms would truly improve college access and in what form "simplification" should take. This project examines the effects of two experimental treatments designed to test the importance of simplifying the process of receiving financial aid and providing clear information about personal aid eligibility using a random assignment research design. H&R Block tax professionals helped low- to moderate-income families complete the FAFSA, the federal application for financial aid. Families were then immediately given an estimate of their eligibility for government aid as well as information about local postsecondary options. A second randomly-chosen group of individuals received only personalized aid eligibility information, which was calculated based on data from the tax form, but they did not receive help completing the FAFSA. Comparing the outcomes of participants in the treatment groups to a control group using multiple sources of administrative data, the analysis suggests that individuals who received assistance with the FAFSA and information about aid were substantially more likely to submit the aid application. High school seniors among this group were also much more likely to enroll in college and receive need-based financial aid the following fall. The program also increased college enrollment for independent adults with no prior college experience, and it increased aid receipt among independent adults who had previously attended college. These results suggest that simplifying the process and providing direct help with the application along with better information could be effective ways to improve college access. However, only providing aid eligibility information without also giving assistance with the form had no significant effect on FAFSA submission rates or college outcomes. Figures and tables are appended. (Contains 6 tables, 2 figures, and 30 footnotes.)

This paper reports on the Macromedia Accessibility Project (MAP), a collaborative effort developed by Macromedia, Inc., The League for Innovation in the Community College, and Pima Community College, Arizona, in order to explore the questions and challenges of implementing accessibility standards in online developmental math courses in community colleges. The purpose of the project, as a two-part process, was to evaluate the capacity to create online mathematical content in an accessible format, and to identify the differences between updating content and design differences for Web-based courses versus creating new content and design features for Web-based delivery. Project team members were charged to audit and upgrade one existing online math course and create one new online math course. As a summer project commencing June 15, 2002 and ending September 15, 2002, the 3-month timeline called for inclusion of training sessions, groups meetings, and follow-up communications. Comments from MAP team developers were summarized for review. This paper describes the two different processes teams went through in the course revisions and the new course development. The MAP team members completed all project goals and objectives as designated, yet noted that their work barely scratched the surface. Includes 5 figures and recommendations for further research. (NB)

This report analyses the disclosure issues raised by technically-imposed restrictions on the use of digital content. It focuses on the application of copy control and digital rights management technologies in three areas: copy-protected CDs; online music, and DVD regional coding. In each of these areas, the report examines the kinds of restrictions that are commonly placed on usage of the products (for example, restrictions on making back-ups or private copies) and assesses the adequacy of the information that is provided to consumers concerning such restrictions. (A bibliography is included. Contains 28 footnotes and 3 figures.)

Information from the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) indicates that training within New Apprenticeships is more flexible than traditional apprenticeships and traineeships. The ability of employers and employees to select a training provider of their choice, providing that it is registered in their state or territory, is known as "User Choice." Results of a survey undertaken by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) in 2001 indicated very high levels of support for User Choice, but also indicated that User Choice was not always meeting expectations. As a result of the survey, ACCI developed proposals designed to strengthen User Choice. The project reported in this paper investigated these proposals with two main aims: (2) To explore the gap between the User Choice arrangements proposed by ACCI and User Choice as it is currently practiced; and (2) To seek the views of the States and Territories about ACCI's proposals, including any potential issues or problems that might arise in implementing them. (Contains 5 tables.)

Systemic efforts to implement data-based decision making at the school and classroom level face several challenges. First, most data available within district information systems are limited to what has been deemed important for the operational needs of schools and the district. Second, educational organizations have little experience integrating complex data into their decision-making processes. Third, although large-scale assessment and accountability data are more generally available for gauging the performance of educational systems, there are major differences between the evidence used for external accountability systems and the data needed for making instructional decisions on a daily basis in the classroom. (Contains 2 figures, 1 table, and 6 notes.) [The research reported in this paper is also sponsored by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, School of Education, University of Wisconsin--Madison.]

This issues paper, sixth in a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. In undertaking formative evaluation studies, the Formative Evaluation of the Distributed National Electronic Resource (EDNER) team has noted that some distributed national resource (DNER) resources and projects are not as accessible as they should be. Higher education in the United Kingdom is not unique in this regard. In spite of the potential of technology to widen access to information, many people are not able to access this information because of location, disabilities, or the limitations of the equipment they have. Online materials must be designed to work with assistive technologies through "accessible" Web design. Some tips for accessibility are summarized, and some resources for checking Web pages for accessibility are described. (SLD)

This paper reports on a project that involved the digitization of manuscripts from the Boswell Collection (i.e., personal papers of James Boswell) by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (Connecticut). In this case, the digitization process was designed to serve a group of scholars already at work on a publication series, and so distinguishes itself from many others by its focus on the scholarly communication process rather than on giving broad access to collections through the Internet. The paper discusses the many reasons that a special collections library might undertake a digital conversion program, and shares the staff's insights into how digital technology has found its place in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Specifically, the paper discusses: background on the library and the Boswell collection; project origins; forming a digitization strategy, including choices regarding where the library should place its emphasis; getting the project underway; the scanning process; results and benefits for the library; results and benefits for the scholar-editors; and conclusions. (AEF)

Social capital helps communities respond positively to change. Research into managing change through learning in communities and in small businesses, particularly farm businesses, has highlighted the importance of relationships between people and the formal and informal structure of communities to the quality of outcomes experienced by communities. Communities can be geographic communities or communities-of-common-purpose, such as agricultural commodity organizations or discussion groups. This paper reviews research into managing change through learning and social capital, presents a model of the simultaneous building and use of social capital, and explores the ways in which learning as part of an agricultural community can be used to bring benefits to isolated geographic communities. The model presented stems from studies in Tasmania (Australia) of the informal learning process that builds resilient communities. The two-stage model conceptualizes the way in which social capital is used and built in interactions among individuals. The first stage depicts social capital at the micro level of one-on-one interactions, focusing on knowledge resources and identity resources (identification with and commitment to the community). The second stage of the model outlines the interrelationship of micro-level social capital processes with community-level and societal-level social capital resources. (Contains 54 references.) (Author/SV)