EDUCATIONAL QUALITY

Program for Instructional Innovation at the University of Oklahoma
The mission of the Program for Instructional Innovation is to “assist the teaching faculty and organizational units at the University of Oklahoma in their efforts to provide educational programs of the highest possible quality.” The website offers tips on teaching, newsletters, an archive of online papers and a collection of other resources. 

Teaching Tips Index
Honolulu Community College has assembled a collection of teaching tips for faculty development. It’s organized by 25 topic categories such as assessment, motivating students, preparing a lesson plan and the first day of class. Tips also include links to other websites.

Learning Theories Knowledge Base at Learning-Theories.com
This knowledge base of learning theories and models is designed to be a resource for educators and scholars in fields, including educational psychology, instructional design and human-computer interaction. The website is an ongoing project to categorize and define theories addressing how people learn.

National Center for Education Statistics
The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the United States and other nations. The NCES fulfills a congressional mandate to collect, collate, analyze and report complete statistics on the condition of American education, conduct and publish reports, and review and report on education activities internationally. Many full reports and research studies are free to view.

Academic Quality Improvement Program
The Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) is an organization with criteria for excellence in colleges and universities. While there is a fee for accreditation, AQIP's Web site offers plenty of free information, including the complete criteria in HTML format and PDF, tips on self-assessments, a comparison between AQIP and Baldrige criteria and a directory of accredited institutions. Quality professionals can apply online to be volunteer advisors, appraisers and facilitators.  

Thomas B. Fordham Institute
The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation promotes excellence in elementary and secondary education and improvements in teacher quality. The site describes the work of the foundation, its grant process and available publications. It also lists books on the subject.

The Higher Learning Commission
The North Central Association Commission on Institutions of Higher Education accredits colleges, universities and other degree granting institutions of higher education. It also works with state, federal and nongovernmental Baldrige, ISO 9000 and similar quality programs to share in the evaluation of institutions. A section of its site deals with the Educational Quality Improvement Model for regional higher education accreditation, which includes total quality management, ISO 9000 and Baldrige criteria.

Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation
The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation has developed three standards, each dealing with a different element of educational evaluation. One standard suggests guidelines for developing and improving student evaluations, one applies to program evaluations and the third applies to personnel evaluations. While the full standards must be purchased from their publisher, useful summaries of all three are available on this Web site.

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