Explaining Evaluations

Determining the successful achievement of objectives

What is an evaluation?

• From the French evaluer… “to find the value of something” circa 1750. Has a different meaning than measurement. It became popular in Education 1930s and 1960s after Kennedy and social programs.

• It is characterizing and appraising subjects of interest in a wide range of human pursuits such as education and health

• Many forms, depending on subject

What is an evaluation?

• The formalization of school and university accreditation procedures led to another definition: Evaluation is the exercise of professional judgment.

(Pace and Friedlander, 1978)

There are more than 75 approaches and techniques like grading and assessment.

Evaluation organizations

• How important are evaluations? The American Evaluation Association has 6,800 members representing all 50 states and 60 foreign countries

• AES has 41 topical subgroups including Ed Tech, Higher Education, needs assessment and theories of evaluation

• Canadian Evaluation Society has 1,100 members, is a bilingual association based in Ottawa and is simlilar in scope to AES

• CES

Main types of evaluation

• But there are only really three kinds of evaluation:• Diagnostic (assessment)• Formative (during the process)• Summative (at the end, in sum)• Can anyone remember Prof. Davidson’s analogy

of them? How did she illustrate the concept of evaluation?

Evaluation

• If we think of ADDIE, the final piece of the puzzle is EVALUATION. It is the litmus test of everything we do as designers, the final but moving piece of the puzzle.

• Carliner states that we need to “teach to the test”… what did Carliner mean?

• A: He meant that we design courses so learners achieve their objectives… and we evaluate if we have done that.

Evaluation

• Lets see how we are doing so far…Where does the word evaluate come from?

• How many members does the Canadian Evaluation Society have?

• What do we call an evaluation done at the end of a project or program ?

Formative Evaluations

Teachers will use quick assessment probes like the one on the last slide to see if students are learning the material… here’s another: If you reflect on what you knew about evaluations before this presentation, has it changed? How?

Formative Evaluations

Formative evaluations are useful to designers because they help us gather data to improve what we are doing, during the process.

Here’s a short video which provides a quick overview of this:

Formative Assessment on the Farm

Evaluation

Final Point

• My research for this cracker barrel led me to a few interesting conclusions: • Reflection is an underrated part of formative evaluations. In many ways, formative evaluations are the most important.• Evaluations of many types shape our government, society and lives in unforeseen ways e.g. social programs.

Evaluations

Thank you for listening!