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Theron DesRosier

CDC Evaluation Working Group: Framework - 2 views

  • Framework for Program Evaluation
  • Purposes The framework was developed to: Summarize and organize the essential elements of program evaluation Provide a common frame of reference for conducting evaluations Clarify the steps in program evaluation Review standards for effective program evaluation Address misconceptions about the purposes and methods of program evaluation
  • Assigning value and making judgments regarding a program on the basis of evidence requires answering the following questions: What will be evaluated? (i.e. what is "the program" and in what context does it exist) What aspects of the program will be considered when judging program performance? What standards (i.e. type or level of performance) must be reached for the program to be considered successful? What evidence will be used to indicate how the program has performed? What conclusions regarding program performance are justified by comparing the available evidence to the selected standards? How will the lessons learned from the inquiry be used to improve public health effectiveness?
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  • These questions should be addressed at the beginning of a program and revisited throughout its implementation. The framework provides a systematic approach for answering these questions.
  • Steps in Evaluation Practice Engage stakeholders Those involved, those affected, primary intended users Describe the program Need, expected effects, activities, resources, stage, context, logic model Focus the evaluation design Purpose, users, uses, questions, methods, agreements Gather credible evidence Indicators, sources, quality, quantity, logistics Justify conclusions Standards, analysis/synthesis, interpretation, judgment, recommendations Ensure use and share lessons learned Design, preparation, feedback, follow-up, dissemination Standards for "Effective" Evaluation Utility Serve the information needs of intended users Feasibility Be realistic, prudent, diplomatic, and frugal Propriety Behave legally, ethically, and with due regard for the welfare of those involved and those affected Accuracy Reveal and convey technically accurate information
  • The challenge is to devise an optimal — as opposed to an ideal — strategy.
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    Framework for Program Evaluation by the CDC This is a good resource for program evaluation. Click through "Steps and Standards" for information on collecting credible evidence and engaging stakeholders.
Gary Brown

Details | LinkedIn - 0 views

  • Although different members of the academic hierarchy take on different roles regarding student learning, student learning is everyone’s concern in an academic setting. As I specified in my article comments, universities would do well to use their academic support units, which often have evaluation teams (or a designated evaluator) to assist in providing boards the information they need for decision making. Perhaps boards are not aware of those serving in evaluation roles at the university or how those staff members can assist boards in their endeavors.
  • Gary Brown • We have been using the Internet to post program assessment plans and reports (the programs that support this initiative at least), our criteria (rubric) for reviewing them, and then inviting external stakeholders to join in the review process.
Joshua Yeidel

Using Outcome Information: Making Data Pay Off - 1 views

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    Sixth in a series on outcome management for nonprofits. Grist for the mill for any Assessment Handbook we might make. "Systematic use of outcome data pays off. In an independent survey of nearly 400 health and human service organizations, program directors agreed or strongly agreed that implementing program outcome measurement had helped their programs * focus staff on shared goals (88%); * communicate results to stakeholders (88%); * clarify program purpose (86%); * identify effective practices (84%); * compete for resources (83%); * enhance record keeping (80%); and * improve service delivery (76%)."
Gary Brown

Online Colleges and States Are at Odds Over Quality Standards - Wired Campus - The Chro... - 1 views

  • the group called for a more uniform accreditation standard across state lines as well as a formal framework for getting a conversation on regulation started.
  • College officials claim that what states really mean when they discuss quality in online education is the credibility of online education in general. John F. Ebersole, president of Excelsior College, said “there is a bit of a double standard” when it comes to regulating online institutions; states, he feels, apply stricter standards to the online world.
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    I note the underlying issue of "credibility" as the core of accreditation. It raises the question, again:  Why would standardized tests be presumed, as Excelsior does, to be a better indicator than a model of stakeholder endorsement?
Joshua Yeidel

Taking the sting out of the honeybee controversy - environmentalresearchweb - 1 views

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    Researchers use "harvesting feedback" and a uncertainty scale to illuminate how stakeholders use evidence to explain honeybee declines in France.
Theron DesRosier

Education Data Model (National Forum on Education Statistics). Strategies for building ... - 0 views

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    "The National Education Data Model is a conceptual but detailed representation of the education information domain focused at the student, instructor and course/class levels. It delineates the relationships and interdependencies between the data elements necessary to document, operate, track, evaluate, and improve key aspects of an education system. The NEDM strives to be a shared understanding among all education stakeholders as to what information needs to be collected and managed at the local level in order to enable effective instruction of students and superior leadership of schools. It is a comprehensive, non-proprietary inventory and a map of education information that can be used by schools, LEAs, states, vendors, and researchers to identify the information required for teaching, learning, administrative systems, and evaluation of education programs and approaches. "
Gary Brown

The Chimera of College Brands - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 1 views

  • What you get from a college, by contrast, varies wildly from department to department, professor to professor, and course to course. The idea implicit in college brands—that every course reflects certain institutional values and standards—is mostly a fraud. In reality, there are both great and terrible courses at the most esteemed and at the most denigrated institutions.
  • With a grant from the nonprofit Lumina Foundation for Education, physics and history professors from a range of Utah two- and four-year institutions are applying the "tuning" methods developed as part of the sweeping Bologna Process reforms in Europe.
  • The group also created "employability maps" by surveying employers of recent physics graduates—including General Electric, Simco Electronics, and the Air Force—to find out what knowledge and skills are needed for successful science careers.
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  • If a student finishes and can't do what's advertised, they'll say, 'I've been shortchanged.'
  • Kathryn MacKay, an associate professor of history at Weber State University, drew on recent work from the American Historical Association to define learning goals in historical knowledge, thinking, and skills.
  • In the immediate future, as the higher-education market continues to globalize and the allure of prestige continues to grow, the value of university brands is likely to rise. But at some point, the countervailing forces of empiricism will begin to take hold. The openness inherent to tuning and other, similar processes will make plain that college courses do not vary in quality in anything like the way that archaic, prestige- and money-driven brands imply. Once you've defined the goals, you can prove what everyone knows but few want to admit: From an educational standpoint, institutional brands are largely an illusion for which students routinely overpay.
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    The argumet for external stakeholders is underscored, among other implications.
Nils Peterson

Education Department Proposes To End Federal Funding To For-Profit Colleges Whose Stude... - 2 views

  • The Education Department proposed much-anticipated regulations Friday that would cut off federal aid to for-profit college programs if too many of their students default on loans or don't earn enough after graduation to repay them.
  • To qualify for federal student aid programs, career college programs must prepare students for "gainful employment."
  • But shares were mixed among companies such as ITT Educational Services Inc., Corinthian Colleges Inc., Education Management Corp. and Career Education Corp. Those companies operate career colleges focusing more on two-year programs or lower-income students and may need to make big changes
Gary Brown

Empowerment Evaluation - 1 views

  • Empowerment Evaluation in Stanford University's School of Medicine
  • Empowerment evaluation provides a method for gathering, analyzing, and sharing data about a program and its outcomes and encourages faculty, students, and support personnel to actively participate in system changes.
  • It assumes that the more closely stakeholders are involved in reflecting on evaluation findings, the more likely they are to take ownership of the results and to guide curricular decision making and reform.
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  • The steps of empowerment evaluation
  • designating a “critical friend” to communicate areas of potential improvement,
  • collecting evaluation data,
  • encouraging a cycle of reflection and action
  • establishing a culture of evidence
  • developing reflective educational practitioners.
  • cultivating a community of learners
  • yearly cycles of improvement at the Stanford University School of Medicine
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    The findings were presented in Academic Medicine, a medical education journal, earlier this year
Nils Peterson

Community Colleges Must Focus on Quality of Learning, Report Says - Students - The Chro... - 0 views

  • Over all, 67 percent of community-college students said their coursework often involved analyzing the basic elements of an idea, experience, or theory; 59 percent said they frequently synthesized ideas, information, and experiences in new ways. Other averages were lower: 56 percent of students, for example, reported being regularly asked to examine the strengths or weaknesses of their own views on a topic. And just 52 percent of students said they often had to make judgments about the value or soundness of information as part of their academic work.
    • Nils Peterson
       
      one wonders, who is the stakeholder that commissioned this assessment and thinks these are important -- looks like the CITR might be underlying their thinking.
Nils Peterson

Nonacademic Members Push Changes in Anthropology Group - Faculty - The Chronicle of Hig... - 1 views

  • Cathleen Crain, an anthropologist who runs a consulting firm near Washington: "There is a growing vision of a unified anthropology, where academics informs practice and practice informs academics."
    • Nils Peterson
       
      Anthropology is having a conversation about stakeholders and this is impacting the national anthro organization. I wonder if its producing metrics that might inform student learning outcomes work.
Gary Brown

2 Efforts to Provide Data on Colleges to Consumers Fall Short, Report Says - Administra... - 2 views

  • Higher education will have to be more accountable for its performance and more open to consumers about the actual cost of attending a college, and help people make easier comparisons among institutions, in order to succeed as the nation's economic engine, says a new report from two nonprofit think tanks here.
  • too little information to make informed choices about where they will get the most from their tuition dollars, say researchers at the two organizations, the libertarian-leaning American Enterprise Institute, and Education Sector, which is a proponent of reforming higher education
  • And without a more thorough and open form of accountability, institutions will not have any incentive to make the changes that will improve students' success,
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  • "If existing flaws are not resolved, the nation runs the risk of ending up in the worst of all worlds: the appearance of higher education accountability without the reality," the authors say.
  • The two voluntary systems criticized in the study are the University and College Accountability Network, begun in September 2007 by the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities to provide information about private colleges, and the Voluntary System of Accountability,
  • it does not obligate institutions to gather or reveal any data that are not already available elsewhere,"
  • associations are beginning to offer workshops and other opportunities for system participants to learn how to use the data they're collecting to improve the college experience for students, she said
  • VSA has the testing lobby written all over it
  • We may all appreciate the cultural context inhibiting public accountability but it is also important to understand that this same accountability is lacking internally where it effectively thwarts attempts to manage the institution rationally; i.e., informed with a continuous flow of mission-critical performance information. With the scant objective information at their command, college presidents and their associates must perform as shamans, reading the tea leaves of opinion and passion among stakeholders.
  • On balance, America's institutions of higher education function in a managerial vacuum.
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    More of the same and the discussion is familiar--our challenge is to bring this topic to the attention of our points.
Gary Brown

Evaluations That Make the Grade: 4 Ways to Improve Rating the Faculty - Teaching - The ... - 1 views

  • For students, the act of filling out those forms is sometimes a fleeting, half-conscious moment. But for instructors whose careers can live and die by student evaluations, getting back the forms is an hour of high anxiety
  • "They have destroyed higher education." Mr. Crumbley believes the forms lead inexorably to grade inflation and the dumbing down of the curriculum.
  • Texas enacted a law that will require every public college to post each faculty member's student-evaluation scores on a public Web site.
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  • The IDEA Center, an education research group based at Kansas State University, has been spreading its particular course-evaluation gospel since 1975. The central innovation of the IDEA system is that departments can tailor their evaluation forms to emphasize whichever learning objectives are most important in their discipline.
  • (Roughly 350 colleges use the IDEA Center's system, though in some cases only a single department or academic unit participates.)
  • The new North Texas instrument that came from these efforts tries to correct for biases that are beyond an instructor's control. The questionnaire asks students, for example, whether the classroom had an appropriate size and layout for the course. If students were unhappy with the classroom, and if it appears that their unhappiness inappropriately colored their evaluations of the instructor, the system can adjust the instructor's scores accordingly.
  • The survey instrument, known as SALG, for Student Assessment of their Learning Gains, is now used by instructors across the country. The project's Web site contains more than 900 templates, mostly for courses in the sciences.
  • "So the ability to do some quantitative analysis of these comments really allows you to take a more nuanced and effective look at what these students are really saying."
  • Mr. Frick and his colleagues found that his new course-evaluation form was strongly correlated with both students' and instructors' own measures of how well the students had mastered each course's learning goals.
  • Elaine Seymour, who was then director of ethnography and evaluation research at the University of Colorado at Boulder, was assisting with a National Science Foundation project to improve the quality of science instruction at the college level. She found that many instructors were reluctant to try new teaching techniques because they feared their course-evaluation ratings might decline.
  • "Students are the inventory," Mr. Crumbley says. "The real stakeholders in higher education are employers, society, the people who hire our graduates. But what we do is ask the inventory if a professor is good or bad. At General Motors," he says, "you don't ask the cars which factory workers are good at their jobs. You check the cars for defects, you ask the drivers, and that's how you know how the workers are doing."
  • William H. Pallett, president of the IDEA Center, says that when course rating surveys are well-designed and instructors make clear that they care about them, students will answer honestly and thoughtfully.
  • In Mr. Bain's view, student evaluations should be just one of several tools colleges use to assess teaching. Peers should regularly visit one another's classrooms, he argues. And professors should develop "teaching portfolios" that demonstrate their ability to do the kinds of instruction that are most important in their particular disciplines. "It's kind of ironic that we grab onto something that seems fixed and fast and absolute, rather than something that seems a little bit messy," he says. "Making decisions about the ability of someone to cultivate someone else's learning is inherently a messy process. It can't be reduced to a formula."
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    Old friends at the Idea Center, and an old but persistent issue.
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