OSCN RESEARCH AND EVALUATION EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Staff and clients interviewed were usually aware of online employment and training related resources. They did not necessarily recognize the name "One Stop Career Network." Variation in Internet access, normative use of Internet tools, involvement in OSCN planning, intra organizational communications, and participation in OSCN training contributed to OSCN awareness. Staff held generally positive expectations for outcomes of the OSCN project. In several cases, those expectations were beyond the scope of the project. Male staff members were generally more satisfied with the online OSCN content (as opposed to other project services) than women staff members. This difference may be attributed to the greater likelihood of male staff being directly involved with the active web site maintenance for their organization. Several types of barriers impeded staff use of Internet tools and online OSCN resources. These barriers included social factors such as finding time-tested non-computer related systems easier for getting work done; frustrations with slow or malfunctioning computers; and dealing with mismatched and old computer systems and hardware. In addition, daily time demands and inconvenient locations of Internet access computers, financial constraints which impeded the purchase of better and more computing equipment, and scarcity of in-house technical help also stood as substantial barriers to widespread normative use of OSCN and general Internet resources and tools. These ongoing frustrations with in-house computing systems likely accounts for the more than 50% of staff feeling that BCN and OSCN had not been integral in helping them with Internet technology. Some assistance with equipment purchases was made late in the grant period and would not have affected these assessments. Staff Internet skills levels improved significantly between January 1997 and August of 1998. While a little more than half of those turning in both surveys were comfortable with email in 1997, almost all were comfortable with this tool in 1998. While 39% of this group were comfortable surfing in 1997, 76% were comfortable in 1998. And while only one person was comfortable checking for html errors in 1997, seven staff (19%) reported comfort with this skill in 1998. Those staff who reported having received training through OSCN were no more likely to have also reported increases in comfort levels with Internet skills as those staff who received no training at all. Fifty percent of staff (18) responding to the 1998 survey had used online employment and training resources within the last six months. While 63% of staff (22) responding to the 1998 survey felt that OSCN had played a substantial role in putting employment and training resources on the Internet, only 49% (17) felt that BCN and OSCN had played a substantial role in helping their organization with the Internet. Male staff were more likely than their female colleagues to be comfortable with html. Clients interviewed were particularly pleased with the online job listings. This positive response to online listings coincides with statistical data from the OSCN web site which revealed that the job links early on became the most popular OSCN resource and remained so throughout the project. The job links pages received 49% of all page requests in September 1998, similar to all previous months. The overall OSCN site saw fairly regular activity levels during 1997 and 1998 with an average of 2283 page requests per week. Clients were most frustrated with having too much information made available through their online searches and being unsure how to make better use of online search engines. Some OSCN web site design problems made it difficult for some clients to use some of the resources. OSCN-sponsored client and staff classroom training on surfing and web site building was not well attended. Evaluations from those who did participate indicated that the sessions were valuable for skill and confidence building.