Edtech 505 - Course Review
Edtech 505: Evaluation for Educational Technologists
John Guthrie
Spring 2013
Week 11 Assignment: The Course in Review
The objective for this week is to review the previous 10 weeks in the
course.
Chapter 1: What is Evaluation?
We covered Chapter 1 in our second week of class. At this
point, I was very thirsty for any information that would help me wrap my head
around the concept of evaluation. This chapter did a great job of sifting
through what I knew and linked it to what I needed to know. In answering “what
is evaluation?”, the chapter did not answer all of my questions, but it did
help me orient my questions more productively.
Chapter 2: Why Evaluate?
This chapter discussed different reasons to evaluate and
considerations for when you are performing an evaluation. Some of the reasons
to evaluate include; fulfilling grant requirements, planning and policy making,
and for research purposes. Some considerations when evaluating include;
evaluation does not guarantee change, focus on trivia, evaluator credibility,
and evaluator objectivity.
Chapter 3: Decision Making: Whom to Involve, How, and Why?
My main take away from this chapter is the program cycle.
The program cycle segregates the task of evaluation into 5 main manageable chunks.
Each chunk reports to or gets information from different sources. The program
cycle flow from “Needs Assessment” to “Program Planning” to “Implementation and
Formative Evaluation” to “Summative Evaluation” to “Philosophy and Goals”.
Chapter 4: Starting Point: The Evaluator’s Program Description
This chapter covers the Evaluator’s Program Description. The
Evaluator’s Program Description is the starting point for a program evaluation
and starts with meeting with concerned parties and discussing the program’s
goals and objectives. The evaluator matches the goals with appropriate
activities. The Evaluator’s Program Description helps guide the evaluator
during the evaluation process.
Chapter 5: Choosing an Evaluation Model
This chapter covers four main evaluation models; discrepancy
model, goal-free model, transaction model, and decision-making model. The
discrepancy model evaluates a programs compliance with a set of standards. The
goal-free model evaluates a program’s effectiveness. The transaction model has
the evaluator giving the stakeholder constant feedback because the evaluator
is, or acts as, a member of the staff.
Chapter 6: Data Sources
This chapter covers quantitative and qualitative data,
levels of data, and different data instruments. Quantitative data is used to
establish facts numerically while qualitative data is a close up detailed
observation. Although the chapter covered these topics well enough, I found the
websites much more informative and easier to digest.
Chapter 7: Data Analysis
Again, the websites were invaluable in understanding the
terms and concepts in this chapter. The main concepts were central tendency and
measures of variability. Ways to measure the central tendency of the data
include the mode, median, and mean. Ways to measure the variability of the data
include percentile, range, standard deviation, and quartile.
Chapter 8: Is it Evaluation or Is It Research?
This chapter helped clarify the difference between
evaluation and research. When I put my evaluation project through this litmus
test, it came out as research. It concerns me a bit that my project is
evaluation instead of research, but I think it is okay for an evaluation
project to be research based. Another main part of this chapter includes population
sampling and how that sampling relates to the population.
Chapter 9: Writing the Evaluation Report
This chapter gave a breakdown of the Evaluation Report. I am
glad that we covered this chapter early on in the course during week four. The
early look at complete evaluation reports really helped me get my head around
what evaluation is in general and what an evaluation report is specifically.
Internet Readings
The textbook was very informative, but it felt a little dry
and dated at times. The internet readings really helped find perspective on
what I read in the textbook. There were two occasions where the internet
readings really exceeded the way the textbook explained things. The first was
“The American Evaluation Association site” and the evaluation data web links. The
American Evaluation Association site (http://www.eval.org/)
contained a mission statement for current evaluators. The site also had a
connection area where you can connect to an evaluator or find requests for
proposal. The web links for using the evaluation data helped to visualize how
the data can be properly manipulated. There were a couple links that I liked
more than others because they were more polished. Even the websites that were
not as well polished were very useful because I really appreciated having a
chance to see the same concept taught from so many different approaches.
Bonus: Design/Create/Develop Another Assignment
An interesting assignment would be to go back and choose an
assignment and create an alternative submission for that assignment.
Conversely, if you submitted an alternate assignment, create either a different
alternate assignment or a standard assignment.
