Evaluation in a project life‐cycle: The hypermedia CAMILLE project

In the CAL literature, the issue of integrating evaluation into the life‐cycle of a project has often been recommended but less frequently reported, at least for large‐scale hypermedia environments. Indeed, CAL developers face a difficult problem because effective evaluation needs to satisfy the potentially conflicting demands of a variety of audiences (teachers, administrators, the research community, sponsors, etc.). This paper first examines some of the various forms of evaluation adopted by different kinds of audiences. It then reports on evaluations, formative as well as summative, set up by the European CAMILLE project teams in four countries during a large‐scale courseware development project. It stresses the advantages, despite drawbacks and pitfalls, for CAL developers to systematically undertake evaluation. Lastly, it points out some general outcomes concerning learning issues of interest to teachers, trainers and educational advisers. These include topics such as the impact of multimedia, of learner variability and learner autonomy on the effectiveness of learning with respect to language skills

Our Museum Special Initiative: An Evaluation

Our Museum: Communities and Museums as Active Partners was a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Special Initiative 2012 – 2016. The overall aim was to influence the museum and gallery sector to:* Place community needs, values and active collaboration at the core of museum and gallery work* Involve communities and individuals in decision-making processes* Ensure that museums and galleries play an effective role in developing community skills and the skills of staff in working with communitiesThis was to be done through facilitation of organisational change in specific museums and galleries already committed to active partnership with communities.Our Museum offered a collaborative learning process through which institutions and communities shared experiences and learned from each other as critical friends. Our Museum took place at a difficult and challenging time for both museums and their community partners. Financial austerity led to major cutbacks in public sector expenditure; a search for new business models; growing competition for funding; and organisational uncertainty and staff volatility. At the same time, the debate at the heart of Our Museum widened and intensified: what should the purpose of longestablished cultural institutions be in the 21st century; how do they maintain relevance and resonance in the contemporary world; how can they best serve their communities; can they, and should they, promote cultural democracy

Benefits realisation management: panacea or false dawn?

Benefits Realisation Management (BRM) is becoming an increasingly important aspect of project and programme management. However, commentators have observed that the practice of BRM is often flawed, and have made suggestions as to how practice might be improved. This paper is concerned with the reasons why the implementation of BRM might not be straightforward, by focusing on the underlying assumptions. It will approach the issue by drawing on the author's experience from the 1990s and 2000s in working in the management of government-funded regeneration programmes in the UK. In this field there was a rigid benefits management framework, although it precedes the development of BRM. The paper will argue that there are important underlying conceptual issues in benefits management which have practical implications and need to be recognised in the development of theory for BRM

Assessing to Achieve High Performance: What Nonprofits are Doing and How Foundations Can Help

For foundation leaders to most effectively support grantees, more needs to be understood about the extent to which nonprofits are assessing performance, how they are approaching this work, and what they are looking for from their funders to support it.To better understand the state of practice of performance assessment at nonprofits, The Center For Effective Philanthropy (CEP) turned to its national panel of nonprofit leaders with questions about their assessment strategies and how they are supported. For nonprofits, measuring and improving performance is a challenging endeavor. Yet, the data from these surveys reveal that nonprofits are assessing performance -- but lack the resources they need to do all they seek to do.The report shows that most nonprofits receiving funding from large foundations collect and use information about their performance, yet many want to gather additional -- or better -- data. The typical nonprofit in the study allocates just two percent or less of its budget to assessing its performance, and few employ staff who are dedicated to this work full time. In approaching this work, only a minority of nonprofits in the study report receiving support from foundations for their performance assessment efforts

National evaluation of Partnerships for Older People Projects

Executive Summary The Partnership for Older People Projects (POPP) were funded by the Department of Health to develop services for older people, aimed at promoting their health, well-being and independence and preventing or delaying their need for higher intensity or institutional care. The evaluation found that a wide range of projects resulted in improved quality of life for participants and considerable savings, as well as better local working relationships. • Twenty-nine local authorities were involved as pilot sites, working with health and voluntary sector partners to develop services, with funding of £60m • Those projects developed ranged from low level services, such as lunch-clubs, to more formal preventive initiatives, such as hospital discharge and rapid response services • Over a quarter of a million people (264,637) used one or more of these services • The reduction in hospital emergency bed days resulted in considerable savings, to the extent that for every extra £1 spent on the POPP services, there has been approximately a £1.20 additional benefit in savings on emergency bed days. This is the headline estimate drawn from a statistically valid range of £0.80 to £1.60 saving on emergency bed days for every extra £1 spent on the projects. • Overnight hospital stays were seemingly reduced by 47% and use of Accident & Emergency departments by 29%. Reductions were also seen in physiotherapy/occupational therapy and clinic or outpatient appointments with a total cost reduction of £2,166 per person • A practical example of what works is pro-active case coordination services, where visits to A&E departments fell by 60%, hospital overnight stays were reduced by 48%, phone calls to GPs fell by 28%, visits to practice nurses reduced by 25% and GP appointments reduced by 10% • Efficiency gains in health service use appear to have been achieved without any adverse impact on the use of social care resources • The overwhelming majority of the POPP projects have been sustained, with only 3% being closed – either because they did not deliver the intended outcomes or because local strategic priorities had changed • PCTs have contributed to the sustainability of the POPP projects within all 29 pilot sites. Moreover, within almost half of the sites, one or more of the projects are being entirely sustained through PCT funding – a total of 20% of POPP projects. There are a further 14% of projects for which PCTs are providing at least half of the necessary ongoing funding • POPP services appear to have improved users’ quality of life, varying with the nature of individual projects; those providing services to individuals with complex needs were particularly successful, but low-level preventive projects also had an impact • All local projects involved older people in their design and management, although to varying degrees, including as members of steering or programme boards, in staff recruitment panels, as volunteers or in the evaluation • Improved relationships with health agencies and the voluntary sector in the locality were generally reported as a result of partnership working, although there were some difficulties securing the involvement of GP

The cathedral and the bazaar of e-repository development: encouraging community engagement with moving pictures and sound

This paper offers an insight into the development, use and governance of e‐repositories for learning and teaching, illustrated by Eric Raymond's bazaar and cathedral analogies and by a comparison of collection strategies that focus on content coverage or on the needs of users. It addresses in particular the processes that encourage and achieve community engagement. This insight is illustrated by one particular e‐repository, the Education Media On‐Line (EMOL) service. This paper draws analogies between the bazaar approach for open source software development and its possibilities for developing e‐repositories for learning and teaching. It suggests in particular that the development, use and evaluation of online moving pictures and sound objects for learning and teaching can benefit greatly from the community engagement lessons provided by the development, use and evaluation of open source software. Such lessons can be underpinned by experience in the area of learning resource collections, where repositories have been classified as ‘collections‐based’ or ‘user‐based’. Lessons from the open source movement may inform the development of e‐repositories such as EMOL in the future

A model for evaluating the institutional costs and benefits of ICT initiatives in teaching and learning in higher education

Significant investments are being made in the application of new information and communications technologies (ICT) to teaching and learning in higher education. However, until recently, there has been little progress in devising an integrated cost‐benefit model that decision‐makers can use to appraise ICT investment options from the wider institutional perspective. This paper describes and illustrates a model that has been developed to enable evaluations of the costs and benefits of the use of ICT. The strengths and limitations of the model are highlighted and discussed

Training, Quality Assurance Factors, and Tools Investigation: a Work Report and Suggestions on Software Quality Assurance

Previously, several research tasks have been conducted, some observations were obtained, and several possible suggestions have been contemplated involving software quality assurance engineering at NASA Johnson. These research tasks are briefly described. Also, a brief discussion is given on the role of software quality assurance in software engineering along with some observations and suggestions. A brief discussion on a training program for software quality assurance engineers is provided. A list of assurance factors as well as quality factors are also included. Finally, a process model which can be used for searching and collecting software quality assurance tools is presented

Decision support evaluation for building information modeling software selection

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has shift the construction industry into a new approach in development of project.The effectiveness of BIM towards increasing productivity and quality of project has been reported not only in literature yet project report.Thus, there are numerous of BIM software available with different features and function.This trend has created decision problem among the companies to select the best software that fulfill company need and project needs.Hence, a web-based Decision Support System (DSS) application namely topsis4BIM has been developed.This paper presented the evaluation the proposed DSS though using the latest technology such as web 2.0 and cloud technology