Present Law and Analysis Relating to Individual Retirement Arrangements

[Excerpt] The House Committee on Ways and Means, Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee, has scheduled a public hearing to take place on June 26, 2008, on the role of individual retirement arrangements (“IRAs”) in our retirement system. The hearing is scheduled to focus on the recently issued report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), entitled “Individual Retirement Accounts, Government Actions Could Encourage More Employers to Offer IRAs to Employees,” June 2008; the role of IRAs in our retirement system; and legislative proposals for automatic IRA enrollment. This document,1 prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, includes a description of present law and analysis relating to IRAs

Women and the Economy 2010: 25 Years of Progress But Challenges Remain

[Excerpt] This report, which includes annual data from 1984 through 2009, provides a comprehensive overview of women’s economic progress over the last twenty-five years and highlights the additional work left to be done. The role of women in the American economy is of indisputable importance. The future of the American economy depends on women’s work, both inside and outside the home

Addressing Long-Term Unemployment After The Great Recession: The Crucial Role Of Workforce Training

[Excerpt] With almost five unemployed workers for every job opening, the economy is not yet creating enough jobs to make a significant reduction in unemployment. Yet employers report that they are having difficulty finding skilled workers for key positions, despite the high ratio of unemployed workers to job openings. Helping workers build new skills and search more effectively for positions that are a good match for their skillset can help to address the mismatch. But to address the high rate of long-term unemployment, this report finds that policymakers will need to simultaneously spur job creation while also investing in education and training programs that can prepare workers for new employment opportunities

DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report

The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students

INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report

INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives