LRN0209 - Evaluation Research

Course Description

Road test evaluation research for your organization. You won’t be disappointed.  Evaluation research can give you and your organization a systematic assessment of the value of resources and time you commit to a project, product, or specific goal. Evaluation research can determine whether or not a process has achieved a goal or yielded the desired results.

Get introduced to the characteristics of evaluation research and how it can be directly applied to assess the impact or effectiveness of a program, policy, or procedure you want to road test in a professional setting.

Course Outline

Unit 1

Setting the Stage for Evaluations

• What is evaluation?
• Why do we do it?
• Needs assessment: first step in evaluation planning
• Share your scenario for something you might evaluate in your professional setting

Unit 2

Practical Issues in Planning and Implementing Evaluations – Part 1

• Individual readiness issues
• Organizational readiness issues
• Self-assessing your own readiness as an evaluator
• Identify key stakeholders: users of evaluation results
• Students share readiness issues (individual, organizational, and self) in related discussion forum

Unit 3

Practical Issues in Planning and Implementing Evaluations – Part 2

• What is a ‘situation analysis’ and how to conduct one
• Focusing your evaluation goals and how you will measure them
• Drafting your plan
• “Dress rehearsal” meeting with key stakeholders to set their expectations
• Students share drafts of their individual situation analysis

Unit 4

Practical Issues in Planning and Implementing Evaluations – Part 3

• Implementing the plan
• Managing time and cost factors
• Keeping lines of communication open with key stakeholders during evaluation
• How to prepare the final evaluation report
• Post-evaluation follow-ups with key stakeholders (what have they learned? Are they using the results?)
• Students share drafts of their individual evaluation plans

Learner Outcomes

1. Describe the unique features of evaluation research and how it differs from other forms of research.

2. Identify a current problem in your professional setting.

3. Understand how to identify and select potential programs, policies, or procedures that could be applied to improve the above-identified problem.

4. Understand situation analysis and why it’s important to successful evaluation research studies.

5. Understand the distinction between formative (in progress) and summative (after completion of implementation) evaluation of the selected program, policy, or procedure being implemented.

6. Develop an evaluation research plan to assess the selected program, policy, or procedure both formatively and summatively.

7. Understand how to encourage practical application of the evaluation research results.

Notes

Course Objectives

To introduce learners to the nature of evaluation research;

To show how you can identify a problem in your professional setting that could benefit from applying a program, policy or procedure to improve it;

To demonstrate how you can conduct a needs assessment to determine the best program, policy, or procedure to the above-identified problem;

To outline how you can identify your desired target outcomes of an evaluation research study;

To explain how you can develop an evaluation research plan to accomplish the above objectives.