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Produced by McKinsey & Company, McKinsey on Society division, December 2012. McKinsey & Company notes that, in many countries, we are faced with "high levels of youth unemployment and a shortage of job seekers with critical skills." In this report, they have compiled case studies of best practices from around the world (with the goal of high employment of program graduates) as well as surveying students about their own prospects based on their education. On this page, links to the report itself (as well as Executive Summary) as well as access to some of the case studies.

If the goal of postsecondary education is employment, this report starts to posit some innovations and solutions.

Published by American Association of Community Colleges, April 2012. From this page, you can download a PDF of the full report, as well as video about the report, information on the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges, and coverage of this report in the media.

Published by staff from Forum One, "The Online Community Report features best practices, strategies, research, and events for Online Community and Social Media professionals," per About the OC Report. Editors include Jim Cashel, Heather Virga, and other Forum One staff.

By Sara Lipka in the Students section of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nov 11 2010. Reporting on the latest report from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, which states that "Increasing college completion is meaningless unless certificates and degrees represent real learning, which community colleges must work harder to ensure."

Published by Volans Ventures Ltd., 2009. This report looks at "five key trends that are driving change-and 50 organizations that are spearheading that change." The report is available via slideshare on this page. There is also a link to the pdf.

By Laura S. Quinn, Idealware, January 2012. Looks at a variety of software tools that can support program evaluation. Report includes a category on Analyzing and Displaying Your Measures, which might be most relevant. There are recommendations for report builders, tools that help create data visualizations, both quantitative and qualitative analysis tools, and dashboard recommendations.  Also reference to an organization called Innovation Network, which might be of interest.

Joint project of the National Science Board and the National Science Foundation (2005), this project looks at the costs, technologies, and processes associated with long-term archiving of data collections and how this potentially impacts science. This page provides links to individual chapters of this report (in PDF format) along with the full report.

By David Nagel, in Policy & Advocacy section of THE Journal, April 23 2010. The article announces the newly published National Educational Technology Trends: 2010, Innovation Through State Leadership report, published by State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). Trends include "enhancing teacher effectiveness" through professional development and "scaling up success" by expanding innovative programs that have worked. Report is bookmarked as well, see trends_edtech tag.

Guy Raz interviews Anya Kamentz (reporter and author) on All Things Considered (NPR), March 13, 2010. According to this story, "about 10 percent of students in America are now enrolled at these online universities." Assume that they mean for-profit online universities, since that is the topic of the report.

By Allison Keyes reported on Tell Me More (NPR) on March 23, 2010. Urban Prep Charter Academy is Chicago's only all-male charter school. This spring, they will graduate their first class; every member of the class has been accepted to a 4-year university. In this report, Keyes interview the CEO of the school, and one graduating senior. Podcast (10 minutes, 50 secs) also available.

Published by Center for Community College Student Engagement, 2010. This report looks at the Survey of Entering Student Engagement (SENSE), launched fall 2006. From the report, "To date, more than 91,000 students from 197 colleges in 37 states have participated in SENSE, thereby helping to create a wealth of new and actionable data about the entering community college student experience."

By Beth Fertig, reported on WNYC March 24, 2010. In this education feature, Fertig reports on an experimental afterschool program called School of One, an individualized math program where students work online with math tutors and also occasionally work together. Their self-paced work plan is based on frequent online assessments. Daniel Willingham is quoted for his work on learning styles. MP3 is available, in addition to the transcript.

2011 Horizon Report is a collaboration between The New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Report focuses on six technologies to watch for future adoption. On near-term horizon (within next 12 months): electronic books, mobiles. 2-3 year horizon: augmented reality and game-based learning. Far term (four to five years): gesture-based computing and learning analytics (data-gathering tools & analytics to study student engagement, performance and progress with goal to adapt curricula accordingly).

By Goldie Blumenstyk in The Chronicle of Higher Education - Administration section, May 22 2013. Announcement of a new report by the Century Foundation looking at the growing differences between 2-Year and 4-Year schools and considering socioeconomic impact of that gap.

By Kara Spak, Chicago Sun-Times, May 31, 2011. This article cites a recent report released by the Alliance for Excellent Education, which finds that "as many as one-third of students entering higher education need to take some sort of remedial or developmental course...." Putting a human face on these statistics is the profile of one student who graduated from high school with a 3.0 GPA and a B in "College Algebra" but still needed to take a non-credit developmental math course when she got to community college.

Published by CMA (Cox, Matthews, and Associates, Inc.), Diverse is an online magazine that looks at higher education through the lens of diversity. In addition to looking at basics like news, opinions, and jobs, the site also provides special reports and a variety of multimedia offerings. Currently on the home page, a searchable database of Top 100 Minority Degree Producers with subsets for AA, undergrad and graduate degrees

Posted by Clay Johnson, 10/25/2011 on ExpertLabs In the context of experts' conversations with government, the author of this post argues that tools such as IdeaScale, Google Moderator and UserVoice are useful for brainstorming but not the best method for a true dialog. These tools give government an excuse to "not" participate with people where they are. The comments on a government site, i.e. the dialogue on evolving data.gov (via IdeaScale) shouldn't replace "participating with practicitioners," which should happen where they are. (i.e. in a Jam, I.F.) Expert Labs aims to get more people involved in order to make policy better. Expert Labs publishes reports, constantly updates their blog and has developed a tool, ThinkUp, that enables users to automatically archive data and communications across Facebook, Twitter and Google+, encouraging engagement on these networks.

by Jon Marcus on The Hechinger Report, December 26, 2011. Open University, a successful British online public university to be used as a model in the U.S. The goal is to help students who are intimidated by higher education adapt to and succeed in college. Next Generation Learning Challenges, a Gates funded initiative, will adapt two free Open University, at-your-own-pace online courses for use at about a dozen U.S. colleges and universities this academic year: one to help students be more comfortable with math so they do better on placement tests or move more quickly through remedial courses, and another to teach students skills to prepare them for college.

By Josh Fischman, and part of The Chronicle (of Higher Education's) 2011 Special Report on Online Learning, published Nov 6 2011. Central Piedmont Community College developed an Online Student Portal learning system to improve retention among its students. They have had success with the system (in use 2004-2008). Now, with a Next Gen grant, they will roll the system out to 6 additional local schools to see if they can match the retention improvements. The system is based both on learning styles and on frequent intervention by students and counselors.

By Jennifer Gonzalez, Students section, The Chronicle of Higher Education, February2 2012. The new project is being led by the Center for Community College Student Engagement and will analyze data from four different surveys: Community College Survey of Student Engagement, the Survey of Entering Student Engagement, the Community College Faculty Survey of Student Engagement, and the newly created Community College Institutional Survey. Reports will be produced annually for the next three years. See CCCSE tag for first year's report.