Weeks 7 & 8: Negotiate and write an evaluation plan

Image: Pink Ball by DeclanTM

Welcome back. I hope you managed to have some relaxation time over the holiday break.

Over the next two weeks you will need to firm up your evaluation planning and prepare a formal plan - information about a template is in the Things to Do list below (taken off the wiki). By now you should have a pretty good idea of what you intend to evaluate. Remember to look at Assessment and Marking Schedule for the pointers on this part of the assessment. And do contact me with your ideas and draft plan before submitting this part of the assessment as we need to negotiate your plan first. Read on for the fun stuff....

Guest speaker: On Tuesday 21 April 19.00-20.00 NZST - Helga Wientjes from the Department of Conservation presented to the class. Here is the Elluminate recording for your viewing pleasure. - she did a wonderful evaluation project for her workplace when she was taking the evaluation of eLearning for Best Practice course in 2008. It was a formative evaluation to measure effectiveness of a web conferencing training module.

Things to do:

• Decide on two eLearning guidelines against which you will evaluate.
• Establish the paradigm and model for your evaluation.
• Look at this example of an evaluation plan - Usability evaluation
• Look at the evaluation tools on the companion web site for the book by Reeves, Thomas, C. and John G. Hedberg (2003), Interactive Learning Systems Evaluation, Englewood Cliffs: Educational Technology Publications.
  • You can download a Microsoft Word Rich Text Format (rtf) version of an Evaluation Plan Template.
  • Remember this can be modified to suit your situation.
• Explore the Evaluation Cookbook to decide on some sampling methods for your project.
• Prepare some draft ideas and post them on your blog.
• Contact your lecturer to negotiate your plan.
• Write up your plan more fully using the suggested section listed in the Assessment and Marking Schedule

Note: a lot of the information in your plan can also be used in your final report about the project.