Week Five: Planning evaluation

Crocuses by Gilles Gonthier CC by attribution 

Can you believe we have now reached week five. Spring is almost here and the signs are everywhere. It is great to see there has been some discussion on the email forum about the two questions I put up:

• Is it always necessary to undertake a Needs Analysis before beginning any eLearning development?
• What are the circumstances which might dictate this approach and when is it not necessary to do one?

So what is on this week?
This week you are scheduled to start the topic: Evaluation planning.  From now on you should be focussing on the activities in the Processes of evaluation area on the wiki. We are spending four weeks on planning, and at the end of this time, you should have a pretty robust plan in place for your evaluation project.  The due date is negotiable in case you were wondering. However, I would advise you aim to have a draft plan ready on your wiki project page (under class projects) to negotiate with me by 12 September, and a final version for marking by 26 September. That way you can start collecting data in October.

Quick tip
Get  your purpose and the type of evaluation sorted first, then formulate the 'big picture' questions. Once you have a draft plan, make sure you obtain feedback from your classmates and integrate it in your plan before notifying me it is ready for marking.  Posting about your progress on your blog as your plan evolves is also a great way to get feedback and it is surprising how helpful this can be.

The activities for this topic are located under Evaluation planning. You will also need to revisit the eLearning Guidelines for New Zealand: http://elg.massey.ac.nz/ to help formulate your 'big picture' questions. View the assessment guidelines to Negotiate an evaluation plan and check out the  Marking criteria.

Web conferences
 There are two web conferences scheduled:

• 25 August - 18:30 – 19:30 - the guest speaker is still to be confirmed. If the speaker is not available,  we will discuss evaluation planning and I will help with some tips for the process, and discuss your ideas.

• 8 September - 18:30 – 19:30 - Rachel Byars, previously a 2009 student, will tell us about her evaluation project - a needs analysis. She is a  senior lecturer in the School of Applied Business at Otago Polytechnic. Her exemplars are available for you to look at.