Study Aids : College Guides

The loss of life and devastation in the Gulf coast region of the United States following the hurricane season of 2005 has led to considerable debate about what should be done and not done in recovering from the damage and mitigating the consequences of future floods. This document reports the experiences of four major floods since 1948 (two in the United States, one in the Netherlands, and one in China), to draw lessons for the Gulf coast restoration effort. The authors conclude that (1) attending to history leads to mitigating the potential damage of floods even when major floods are few and far between; (2) the critical concept of integrated water resource management policy-particularly its implication that flood damage control includes conceding land to the water from time to time-is necessary but may be difficult to accept; (3) delineating roles and responsibilities clearly in advance produces better outcomes; and (4) out of disaster can come improvements to the social and physical infrastructure that go beyond flood protection. more...

Price: $20.00

Getting Ready for College is the ultimate easy-to-use guide to success for college-bound seniors, first-years, and their parents. Polly Berent answers the questions you didn’t know you would need to ask: • What’s the deal on financial aid and cash management? • Should I bring a flashlight to school? Do I really need a microwave and a vacuum cleaner? • Should I call Mom every time I’m homesick? Will my boyfriend/girlfriend wait for me? • Will having a credit card help me? Do I need quarters for the laundry? • When should I lock my room? Where can I fill my prescriptions in my new town? • Should I take intro classes or harder classes? Should I join a frat/sorority? • How could I possibly have time to figure all this out and keep in touch with my old friends? This essential manual includes day planners, notes on how to take notes, tips on how to make a “real life” file, and advice from scores of college students in the trenches as well as campus health-care professionals, college counselors, administrators, and financial-aid advisers. more...

Price: $9.95

Current U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy has relied heavily on the use of force against Islamist insurgents-a tactic that has increased their ranks. What is needed instead are stronger cognitive capabilities that will enable more effective COIN against an elusive, decentralized, and highly motivated insurgency-capabilities that will enable the United States to “fight smarter.” Cognitive COIN goes beyond information technology and encompasses comprehension, reasoning, and decisionmaking, the components that are most effective against an enemy that is quick to adapt, transform, and regenerate. Countering the challenges of a global insurgency demands the ability to understand it, shape popular attitudes about it, and act directly against it. The four cognitive abilities that are most important to COIN operations are anticipation, opportunism, decision speed, and learning in action, applied through rapid-adaptive decisionmaking. In 21st-century COIN, tight control and bureaucracy must yield to the power of networked intelligence, with each operative authorized to act, react, and adapt. With these notions as a backdrop, this paper offers concrete ideas for gaining the cognitive advantage in anticipating and countering the new global insurgency. more...

Price: $24.00

U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) is faced with the challenge of ensuring that the flow of qualified volunteers is adequate to meet future active-duty accession requirements. This report documents research methods, findings, and policy conclusions from a project analyzing human resource management options for improving recruiting production. It details research designed to develop new insights to help guide future recruiter management policies. The research involves econometric analyses of three large and rich datasets. The first analysis compares the career paths of enlisted personnel, including recruiters. The second analyzes individual recruiter characteristics and links those characteristics with their productivity, controlling for a variety of independent factors. Finally, the research focuses on station-level recruiting outcomes, paying close attention to the management options that can affect recruiter production and effort. These empirical analyses demonstrate that various types of human resource management policies can be very helpful in meeting the Army’s ambitious recruiting requirements. For example, the findings have implications for human resource policies in the areas of selecting soldiers for recruiting duty, assigning recruiters to stations, missioning to promote equity across recruiters, missioning to increase recruiter productivity, using promotions to motivate and reward recruiters, and screening out recruiters who are under-producing. Although the gains from any individual policy appear to be modest, the cumulative benefits of implementing multiple policies can save the Army hundreds of millions of dollars annually. This work will interest those involved in the day-to-day management of recruiting resources as well as researchers and analysts engaged in analyses of military enlistment behavior. more...

Price: $27.50

The term reform-oriented teaching describes a collection of instructional practices that are designed to engage students as active participants in their own learning and to enhance the development of complex cognitive skills and processes. This monograph presents the findings of a multiyear National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded study of the effectiveness of reform-oriented science and mathematics instruction. It builds on an earlier RAND study, called the Mosaic project, which found “a weak but positive relationship” between reform-oriented practices and student achievement. The present study, called Mosaic II, extends this earlier research in two important ways. First, it incorporates more-diverse indicators of student exposure to reform-oriented practices, including innovative, vignette-based measures. Second, it follows students for three years in order to measure the relationship after longer exposure to reform practices. Mosaic II was designed to answer two major research questions: * Is the use of reform-oriented instructional practices in mathematics and science associated with higher student achievement? * Is the relationship between reform-oriented practices and achievement sensitive to the aspects of achievement that are measured? The research was conducted in three districts that participated in the NSF Local Systemic Change program, although the study is not an evaluation of the implementation or impact of that specific program. We found nonsignificant or weak positive relationships between reform-oriented instruction in mathematics and science and student achievement measured using multiple-choice tests. The results also reinforce the message that measurement matters--i.e., the observed relationship between reform-oriented instruction and achievement may depend on how achievement is measured. It is common practice to use existing state or district tests as measures of program effectiveness, because it is often not feasible to administer add more...

Price: $30.00