Week Five: Planning evaluation - purpose and evaluation questions

New Zealand sheep by 111 emergency

Great news! Professor Tom Reeves has agreed to be a guest speaker and share some of his expertise about evaluation. I have scheduled him for Wednesday 7 September at 12:00 -13:00 NZST. I do hope lots of you can make it over the lunch hour. As usual we will meet in the Wimba classroom, and the session will be archived.  Do come ready with questions about evaluation. I will let him know beforehand some of the topics people from the previous online meeting asked to have explained.

Where should you be by now?
By now you should have decided on an evaluation project, and have prepared the background and rationale, goals and decisions. You should also have found a research article from the literature which relates to your plan. This will be useful in informing your evaluation design. I deliberately left writing the purpose of the evaluation (Aim) until you have had time to think about the type of evaluation you will do.  You need to choose an evaluation approach which fits the reasons for carrying out the evaluation and the audience involved. The audience is usually the participants as well as the managers and colleagues who have an interest in the outcomes of the evaluation. You can leave the Introduction for now, as this is best done once the rest of the plan is completed.


What is happening this week?
Continue with your evaluation plan. All the activities and resources related to Evaluation Planning are now located in the section called: Planning on WikiEducator (via Course Activities from eMIT). Other sections (Results, and Reporting) are not visible as yet as they are under development. (Evaluation processes has met its demise, and resources from there have moved.)

This week you need to decide clarify the purpose of the evaluation, and write the Aim and Evaluation questions. These are the 'big picture' questions. Some of you may have one evaluation question, and others may have two or three. Under each of the broad evaluation questions, you can list one or two sub-questions which are more specific.

Activity Five- Aim and Evaluation questions.
    * Prepare the aim and two or three evaluation questions, and sub-questions for your plan to fit the decisions and goals.
    * Add to the project wiki.
    * Use the project forum to ask for feedback from the class.

I hope you can provide feedback to each other. I will be checking the project wikis later on in the week, but do email me once you have a draft Aim and Evaluation questions ready.

Weeks seven and eight: Negotiate and write an evaluation plan

First up, I hope some of you can make the Elluminate presentation by Sandra Elias - live from Vancouver - Thursday 17 April 5.30 - 6.30 pm (http://tinyurl.com/2l6r7w). The presentation is about an evaluation of how online discussion was used in a midwifery nutrition course.

The schedule this week
This week if you are following the course schedule closely, you will need to firm up your ideas for your evaluation project. Remember to look at Assessment and Marking Schedule for the pointers on this part of the assessment.

Things to do:
Decide on two eLearning guidelines against which you will evaluate - three is maximum.

• 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.