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Educational Services (educational + services)
Selected AbstractsThe learning credit card: A tool for managing personal development,BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY, Issue 2 2008Nick Rushby This is the report of a five month study, undertaken by Sundridge Park Training Technologies in association with Guildford Educational Services to assess the potential of smart card technology to support learning and the management of learning. The study had two strands,the state of the art of the technology and its potential for supporting, delivering and managing learning. In addition to a study of the literature and extensive discussions with people using smart cards, potential users of smart card and visionaries, the project team developed two illustrative systems using cards to store personal data relating to education and training. The term ,smart card' is often used loosely to describe three different types of card, each of which is similar in general shape and size to a traditional credit card. These are: memory cards, laser cards,and true smart cards incorporating a processor and memory. This study has been concerned with memory cards and smart cards. The focus for smart card applications has been predominantly financial: there are relatively few applications in education or training. A notable exception is the large scale project at the University of Bologna which uses smart cards to manage the progress and achievements of a large number of students in the Department of Electronics. The two illustrative systems provided valuable experience of using memory cards and smart cards in quasi-real education and training applications. They highlighted the problems of limited memory capacities and confirmed the high level of user acceptance reported by other trials. We can expect considerable advances in the technology of both memory cards and smart cards over the next months and years. The memory capacities of both types of cards will increase many-fold and the unit costs will fall as large quantities of cards are produced for financial applications. Education and training applications will benefit from this expanding market. The major surprise from the study was the level of interest in the work and the enthusiasm expressed by almost all of those who came to hear of it. The general level of awareness of smart card technology was found to be low. However, the requirement for a system which will enable individuals to manage and own their learning on an extended timescale was generally recognised. Some of the possible applications for smart cards and memory cards in education and training had emerged before the official start of the study and it is clear that the technology is potentially pervasive. The project team and those consulted identified a wide range of possible applications both in education and in training. These focussed on assessment, personal course planning and management, identification of relevant learning opportunities, and the ownership of learning. It was felt that, over the next few years, smart cards are very likely to be in common use as credit cards for financial applications. Therefore, their use for education and training should be planned now. The recommendations from the study are that: More detailed studies are needed to find out how smart cards and memory cards could be used by different organisations in a fully operational system; Standards should be established for smart card applications in education and training, similar to those governing financial applications; Applications should be developed after the standards have been established. To be convincing, these should take a case study approach with small pilot studies in a variety of contexts and must follow real needs rather than attempt to drive them; The case studies would then form the basis for a campaign to increase awareness of smart cards and their potential for education and training, together with a programme for building an infrastructure to support the proposed systems. The public sector should fund the task of developing standards and providing interfaces with existing educational systems and projects to demonstrate the feasibility of various applications. Since educational standards have a European dimension, the European Community may be a source of support for work in the area of standards. At the same time, private sector funding should be sought for skill development and career development systems in industry and in education. The Training Agency itself should consider the application of smart card technology to the control and management of the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). [source] The Impact of Public School Attributes on Home Sale Prices in CaliforniaGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 3 2000David E. Clark The quality of public schools is often cited as an important attribute which distinguishes a community. Indeed, a recent public opinion poll conducted by the California Public Education Partnership indicates that residents rank improvements in public education higher than such high profile issues as environmental quality and crime reduction. In order to explore the role of educational quality in determining residential property values, a hedonic housing price model is used on a large sample of homes which sold within Fresno County in California over the period 1990-1994. After controlling for a wide range of housing characteristics and neighborhood features, the findings indicate that the school district does significantly influence the real sale price. Then the relative importance of inputs into the production of educational services is investigated as compared to output measures of productivity. These findings suggest that both input and output measures are important. However, elasticity estimates of input measures tend to be higher than those of output measures, with the average class size by far the strongest influence. There is some evidence to suggest that the benefits of additional teachers likely outweigh the costs. Finally, the findings suggest that attributes of schools are more highly valued by local residents than either crime or environmental quality measures within the community. [source] Too Much Competition in Higher Education?AMERICAN JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, Issue 5 2009Some Conceptual Remarks on the Excessive-Signaling Hypothesis Within the economics of higher education, there is a small but influential literature that describes and analyzes the outcomes of competitive processes on markets for higher educational services. Colleges and universities in the United States currently invest a vast amount of resources in order to attract well-qualified students. Costly activities like advertising, infrastructure investments, the recruitment of academic stars, or the granting of merit-based tuition discounts can be interpreted as different forms of "market signaling" in the sense of Spence. According to some social science authors, these signaling activities have reached a dimension that has to be classified as excessive or socially wasteful from a welfare-economic viewpoint. The present article makes some conceptual remarks on this excessive-signaling hypothesis, and intends to contribute to the debate about the (potentially) harmful and beneficial effects of competition in higher education. [source] The Value of Secondary School Quality*OXFORD BULLETIN OF ECONOMICS & STATISTICS, Issue 3 2003Leslie Rosenthal Improving the quality of state-funded secondary school education has become a major policy aim in the UK. However, without a valuation of the social benefits derived from public provision of educational services, the rational evaluation of policy to this end is difficult. Utilizing the argument that dwellings near better schools command a price premium, this paper presents results from an empirical exercise aimed at providing such a social valuation of increased school quality. Using a large set of data for England, and an instrumental variable approach, results indicate an elasticity of dwelling purchase price with respect to exam performance by schools at around +0.05. One implication is that society would value a general increase of five percentage points in exam performance by about £450 million per annum. [source] Federalism in an endogenous growth model with tax base sharing and heterogeneous education services,PAPERS IN REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2005Thierry Madiès Federal system; provision of education; tax base sharing; endogenous growth and human capital; "predative" governments Abstract., We examine the effects of tax base sharing on the growth path of an economy in which central and regional governments provide heterogeneous educational services (general and specific training) which increase capital productivity. Our focus is the non co-operative game between two overlapping governments , central and regional , whose objective is to maximise their net tax revenues of educational spending (Leviathan hypothesis). We will show that the dispute between centralisation and decentralisation depends on two effects; the first is a tax effect, which supports centralisation in that tax base sharing leads to overtax the common tax base, and so has a negative effect on the growth path. Second is a public good effect, which defends decentralisation because the very diversity of central and regional educational services has a beneficial effect on the growth path (educational services are imperfect substitutes and "specific assets" of each level of government). We discuss the virtue of tax base sharing in a federation, as an incentive scheme within government's grasp. [source] Exposure to hazardous workplace noise and use of hearing protection devices among US workers,NHANES, 1999,2004,,AMERICAN JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL MEDICINE, Issue 5 2009SangWoo Tak ScD Abstract Background To estimate the prevalence of workplace noise exposure and use of hearing protection devices (HPDs) at noisy work, NIOSH analyzed 1999,2004 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Methods A total of 9,275 currently employed workers aged ,16 years were included in the weighted analysis. Hazardous workplace noise exposure was defined as self-reported exposure to noise at their current job that was so loud that the respondent had to speak in a raised voice to be heard. Industry and occupation were determined based on the respondent's current place and type of work. Results Twenty-two million US workers (17%) reported exposure to hazardous workplace noise. The weighted prevalence of workplace noise exposure was highest for mining (76%, SE,=,7.0) followed by lumber/wood product manufacturing (55%, SE,=,2.5). High-risk occupations included repair and maintenance, motor vehicle operators, and construction trades. Overall, 34% of the estimated 22 million US workers reporting hazardous workplace exposure reported non-use of HPDs. The proportion of noise-exposed workers who reported non-use of HPDs was highest for healthcare and social services (73.7%, SE,=,8.1), followed by educational services (55.5%). Discussion Hearing loss prevention and intervention programs should be targeted at those industries and occupations identified to have a high prevalence of workplace noise exposure and those industries with the highest proportion of noise-exposed workers who reported non-use of HPDs. Am. J. Ind. Med. 52:358,371, 2009. Published 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Public Budget Choices and Private Willingness to PayPUBLIC BUDGETING AND FINANCE, Issue 2 2010BRANDON C. KOFORD Efficient allocation of public funds depends upon good information about citizens' values. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how citizens' values can be obtained by eliciting marginal willingness to tradeoff (MWTTO) ratios for public spending categories and linking these ratios to individual, private willingness to pay. The link enables estimation of the willingness to pay for an expansion to any of the budget categories based on the elicited willingness to pay and the marginal willingness to tradeoff ratios. Tradeoff ratios and willingness to pay are estimated for public budget categories in Kentucky based on a representative sample surveyed by mail and the web in 2007. Estimates show that individuals are willing to pay the most for an expansion to educational services, followed by health care. [source] | |||||||||||||