Entropy measures on the induced course load matrix

Matrices have been developed by the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems at Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education that illustrate and quantify the relationships between and among credit hours produced (in courses, departments, disciplines, and other aggregations) and the degree programs (lower division, upper division, and graduate students in various majors) that consume the credits. A matter of interest is the extent to which course offerings (herein referred to as disciplines) complement and are complemented by the various student programs. A numerical measure of complementation among disciplines and programs has been developed. This measure, based on the entropy concept of information theory, is always a number between zero and one. Applied to a discipline, the measure expresses the extent to which that discipline's credit hour output is either monopolized by a subset of programs or consumed evenly by all programs. Similarly, applied to a program the measure expresses the extent to which it is interdisciplinary in content. Hence, the measure provides an expression of monopoly or equilibrium on a scale from zero to one, and an expression of interdisciplinarity, also on a scale of zero to one. This permits both disciplines and programs (at whatever levels of aggregation) to be quantified and ranked, for purposes of description, analysis, projection, goal-setting, programming, budgeting, and other processes of institutional management. In addition, certain global measures are developed which express the complementation between all disciplines, between all programs, and between all disciplines and programs. These are measures of curriculum integration and can be applied to a single institution or portion thereof at a single point in time; they can be applied through time. Under certain conditions and subject to various precautions, they can be applied to produce interinstitutional comparisons. The development of these measures is presented at length, and their application is illustrated at length. Potential uses and appropriate lines of related inquiry are enumerated.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Education

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Higher Education Administration

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Year dc:date.issued

1976

Author dc:creator

• Hudgins, Merit William

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/88692

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/88692