) DOCUMENT RESUME ED 250 015 IR 050 978 AUTHOR Clay, Katherine; Davis, James E. TITLE National Education Practice File. Final Report. - Evaluation Report. INSTITUTION San Mateo County Office of Education, Redwood. City, CA. SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE Sep 84 NOTE 430p.; CooperaiiVe Agreement #00-CA-82-0001.e PUB TYPE Reports - Research/Technical (143) EDRS PRICE MFO1 /PC18 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Administrators; Curriculum Guides; *Databases; *Elementary School Teachers; Elementary Secondary Education; *Information Needs; Information Retrieval; Instructional Materials; Learning Activities; *Online Systems; Program Evaluation; Reference Materials; Search Strategies *Secondary School Teachers IDENTIFIERS *ERIC; *National, Education Practice File '' ABSTRACT The purpose of the National Education Practice File (NEPF) was to find out from educational practitioners what types of materials would be of value to them; to locate the types of information identified; and to make this information available to them through the development of a computerized file of practitioner-oriented materials. The 2-year, 4-phase project, which took place from October 1, 1982 to September 30, 1984, was conducted by the San Mateo Educational Resources Center (SMERC) with two subcontractors--the Social Science Education:Consortium, contractor for the ERIC Clearinghouse on Social Studies/Social Science Education;'and the ERIC Processing and Reference Facility. Phase I was concerned with the developmentof clear and concise specifications of the types of materials needed by practitioners to support improvement efforts at the classroom and building level. The principal activity of Phase II was the creation of a separate computerized test file of all materials already in ERIC that met these specifications. These items were tagged "Practitioners," using a new Target Audience dataelement developed for NEPF. The development of new sources of practitioner-oriented materials and the addition of such documents to ERIC were the primary activities in Phase III. Evaluation of the file was conducted at nine official test sites in Phase IV. Recommendations based on experiences with and evaluation of the project were made in three major categories: the educational practitioner as audience for ERIC; building a database for practitioners; and outreach. The project resulted the identification and tagging of 46,344 ERIC documents (RIE) and articles (CLIP.) with the new "practitioners" Target Audience tag. Twenty-three appendixes to the final report are presented: (1) Report of Working Group Meeting; (2) Search Strategy; (3) ERIC Processing Manual (Guidelines for Applying Target Audience); (4) Revision in Timelines; (5) Acquisitions and Selection Plan, plus Addendum; (6) Document Acquisition and Selection Chart; (7)igenda--FieldTest Site Training; (8) Recordkeeping Forms, Explanatory Materials; (9) Full Text Documents (Guidelines for Processing); (10) Sensing Network Survey and Highlights of Results; (11) New Acquisitions Sources; (12) Journal Articles Compiled (Guidelines for,Compiling); (13) Journal Articles Compiled (Guidelines for Processing); (14) Flyers, Letters, Explan-tory Materials Used by Clearinghouses; (15) 25 Step Processing Plan; (16) Copyright Laws: Implications for ERIC; (17) Acquisitions Sources--List; (10 Sample Search Packet; (19) Client Telephone Interview Form; (20) Boulder Valley Information Packet; (21) Interview Form--ERIC Clearinghouse Directors; (22) Interview Form--Practice File Searchers; and (23) Statistics on NEPF Documents (Target Audience, Level of Availability, Number of Micro!iche, Length, Type). (BEN) r. U.S. DEPARTMENT OP EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF :!OUCATION NATIONAL EDUCATION PRACTICE'FILE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFONMATION- CENTER IERICI This document has been reproduced as received from tho person or organoation RFP: NIE-R-82-0005 oretinatmg it Minn, chanties have been made to improve Cooperative Agreement NO.00-CA-82-0001 reproduction duality I Points of view or opinions stated inthis doCu merit do not necessarily representofficial NIE Between the National Institute of Education positron or poky and c San Mateo County Office of Education FINAL REPORT 0 Submitted by Katherine Clay, Project Director San Mateo Educational Resources Center (SMERC) 333 Main Street Redwood City, CA 94063 O EVALUATION REPORT Submitted by James E. Davis Director of Subcontract Operations Social Science Education Consortium, Inc. SSEC/ERIC/ChESS 855 Broadway Boulder, CO 80302 Assistance in preparing this report included: Mary Moray, Project Coorlinator SMERC Information Center Robert N. Abelson, Project Evaluator SSEC/ERIC/ChESS September, 1984 7 NATIONAL EDUCATION PRITTICE 'FILE Executive Summary iNTRooncrIcti The purpose of the National Education Practice Pile(NEPF) wass.,(1)"to find out from, the educational practitionerwhat types of information would be of value to the educational practitioner; (2) tolocate the types of information identified; and (3) to make this information easily accessiblt, to :-the .educational practitioner through the development of a computerised file 'of practitioner-orientedmaterials. The NEPF was atwo-year, four -phase project which took place from October 1, 1982to September-30,1184. The prime contractor was the SanMateo EducationalResources Center (SMERC), a programwithin the, San Mateo County Officeof Education, Redwood City, CA. There were two subcontractors: (1) the Soo.ial Science Education Consortium, contractor for the ERIC Clearinghouse on Social Studies/SocialScience Education,whichevaluatedthe HIPP; and (2) the ERIC Processing and Reference Facility which provided technical support. PEASE I of the mm, PhaseI of the NEP? was to produce clearand concise specifications of thetypesofmaterials which teachersand buildinglevel school administrators needto support *prow:me:At efforts at the classroom andbuilding level. To find out from the practitionerwhat types of information are of value, athree-day Working Group meeting was held in Washington, D.C. on March 1-3, 1983. A diverse group of educators to participate in the WorkingGroup, including 7 . 0 was selected teachers, 3 school librarians, 4 school principals,4 representatives from federaleducation agencies and 5 rel:esentativasfrom national organizations which serve building level schoolpersonnel. TheWorking Group analysed 35 different document types(pre-identified by project staff) and recommended that the NEPFfocus on the following toppriority document types: (1) promising practices; (2) learning activities; (3) units of study; (4) resource and backgroundmaterials; .(5) compilationsof ideasfrom journal articles; (6) brief research summaries/syntheses; (7) curriculum guides; (8) lesson plans;(9) fact sheets or ready reference materials; (10) games/puszles; (11) annotatedbibliographies; and (12) worksheets.The Working Group also developed criteria for selecting documents for the NEPF. PEASE II of the NEPF PhaseII of the NIP? was to,create a separatecomputerised file of all the materials contained in ERIC which met thespecifications developed byteachers and administrators in Phase I. Project staff developed a computer strategy designed to pull from ERICthose documents meeting the specificationsdevelopedbythe Working Group. Throughout the courseofthe project, a total of 46,344 ERIC documents (both RIE and CUE, primarilyfrom July 1985 to present) were reviewed and lected by information .specialists for inclusion inthe test frri. This subset of the ERIC system (representingpractitioner-oriented materials) wastaggedPRACTITIONERS, usinga Target Audience file partitioningdata element developed jointly by project staff and the ERIC Facility. PHASE III of the NEPF Phase III of the NEPF was to develop new sources of practitioner-oriented documents and to addthesenewtypesof documents to ERIC: The total number of documents acquired duringthe life ofthe SWF was 2,548.The total number of documents selected for inclusion and processed into the NEPF was 1,234.All documents in the NEPF were reviewed byatleasttwo professionals: the NEPF ProjectDirector (or designee) and one ERIC Clearinghouse Director (or designee). The five categories containing the largestnumber of documentswere (l) resource and background materials (283 documents); (2) promising practices (246 documents); (3) learning activities (194 documents); (4) units of study (120 documents); and n(5) fact sheets or ready reference materials (113 documents). The breakdown of the length of documents is: 1 page (6.80); 2 -3 iPageS (21.10); 4-11 pages (23.90) ; 11-100 pages (39.40) ; 100+ pages(8.60., -, There are84 full, text documents in the MP, each a maximum of500 wordu in length. Most of the 6.8% one-page documents arethese full text documents. Due to theinitial problems in obtaining multiple .reproduction releases, thereare only12 compilations of journal articles in theNEPF. However, obtaining reproduction releases was becoming increasingly easy toward the end of the project. PHASE rs, of the MEP? Phase IV of the WEPT was to test the file and collectdata related to its strengthsandweaknesses in meetingthe information needs of teachers and school administrators.lane test sites were nominated by ERIC clearinghouses andWorkingGroupmembers. In-depth telephone interviews wereconductedwith personnel ateach site, and the following official testsites were selected: INFORMS (Iowa State Department of Education);the Wayne County (Michigan) Intermediate SchoolDistrict; andthe WYCTCC