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

A Review of the Major School Counseling Policy Studies in the United States: 2000-2014

Jay Carey and Ian Martin conducted a review of the major policy studies concerning school counseling in the United States. The authors located 37 documents disseminated between 2000 and 2014 that were either intentionally written with a focus on policy implications or were frequently used to attempt to influence policy decision-making. Their review is organized by types of policy studies: Literature Reviews, Survey Research, Statewide Evaluations of School Counseling Programs, State Evaluations of School Counseling Practice, Existing Database Investigations of School Counseling, Research Identifying Elements of Exemplary Practice, Studies of Evaluation Capacity and Practices in School Counseling

Measuring the Impact of Youth Voluntary Service Programs

Summary and Conclusions of a meeting of international experts hosted by the World Bank and Innovations in Civic Participation to discuss evaluation of the impact of youth civic engagement on development

Demographic Variations in Achievement Goal Orientations among Prisoners on Formal and Vocational Training in Uganda

Educating Prisoners has become a worldwide concern as a measure that can save community costs associated with criminal behavior. In Uganda, there is low participation in formal and vocational training among prisoners which can be associated with lack of knowledge on achievement goal orientations. This is central for adequate implementation of academic and vocational education in prisons, otherwise it may lead to wasted Government initiative and commitment on education as a rehabilitation strategy for prisoners. The purpose of the study was to assess demographic variations in achievement goal orientations among prisoners on formal and vocational training in Uganda. This study adopted across sectional survey design with a mixed methods approach. The population was adult male and female prisoners enrolled on both formal and vocational training in Luzira prison using census sampling strategy. Measures used included the bio data section and the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey. Permission was sought from all relevant authorities and data analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 20. The study found out that there is no statistically significant relationship between mastery goals and demographic information; and between performance approach goals and demographic information reflected in the P values. However, there is a statistically significant relationship between performance avoidance goals and gender (P=.013). There is no statistically significant relationship between Approach avoidance goals and other demographic variables as reflected in their P values. The findings of this study may be used by prison education instructors, administrators and curriculum planners in bridging the gap between demographic variations and achievement goal orientations. This study posit to the importance of understanding prisoners goal orientations and how these goals influence their learning and academic outcomes. It is generally acknowledged that setting achievement goal orientations may be integrated into instructional materials to promote better academic achievement. Prisoners participating in academic and vocational education should be encouraged to adopt achievement goals according to the broader social and psychological horizon which shall help to direct their attention towards activities that will help them energies performance there by motivating prisoners expend greater effort in line with difficulties of achieving goals, spend more time and persist longer working on tasks to improve the overall performanc

The Principal Internship: How Can We Get It Right?

Examines educational leadership degree programs in the SREB region. Focuses on the problems within internships, and provides ideas on how programs can be designed to produce good school leaders

A Lesson Plan for Partnerships: Insights from Leading STEM Nonprofits

In 2013, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation conducted research to better understand partnerships between corporations and nonprofits. The research, which was conducted through its Corporate Citizenship Center (CCC), looked at a specific set of nonprofit organizations. Each organization works to improve education in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and all received grants from the Department of Education's Investing in Innovation Fund.The goal of the research was to discover two things: (1) how leading nonprofits effectively partner with corporations, and (2) how nonprofits measure their success and share it with corporate donors. While STEM nonprofits were chosen for this study, the findings in this paper may apply to other types of nonprofit relationships

Information systems evaluation methodologies

Due to the prevalent use of Information Systems (IS) in modern organisations nowadays, evaluation research in this field is becoming more and more important. In light of this, a set of rigorous methodologies were developed and used by IS researchers and practitioners to evaluate the increasingly complex IS implementation used. Moreover, different types of IS and different focusing perspectives of the evaluation require the selection and use of different evaluation approaches and methodologies. This paper aims to identify, explore, investigate and discuss the various key methodologies that can be used in IS evaluation from different perspectives, namely in nature (e.g. summative vs. formative evaluation) and in strategy (e.g. goal-based, goal-free and criteria-based evaluation). The paper concludes that evaluation methodologies should be selected depending on the nature of the IS and the specific goals and objectives of the evaluation. Nonetheless, it is also proposed that formative criteria-based evaluation and summative criteria-based evaluation are currently among the most and more widely used in IS research. The authors suggest that the combines used of one or more of these approaches can be applied at different stages of the IS life cycle in order to generate more rigorous and reliable evaluation outcomes

Making Out-of-School Time Matter: Evidence for an Action Agenda

Presents findings from a review of literature that identifies and addresses the level of demand for OST services, the effectiveness of the offerings, quality in OST programs, how to encourage participation, and how to build further community capacity

The effect of state core self-evaluations on task performance, organizational citizenship behaviour, and counterproductive work behaviour

Although the personality-performance relationship has been studied extensively, most studies focused on the relationship between between-person differences in the Big Five personality dimensions and between-person differences in job performance. The current paper extends this research in two ways. First, we build on core self-evaluations (CSEs): an alternative, broad personality dimension that has proven to be a good predictor of job performance. Second, we tested concurrent and lagged within-person relationships between CSEs and task performance, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). To this end, we conducted two experience sampling studies; the first one assessing the relationship between state CSEs and levels of momentary task performance and OCB, and a second study in which employees reported on their level of state CSEs and momentary CWB. Results showed that there is substantial within-person variability in CSEs and that these within-person fluctuations relate to within-person variation in task performance, OCB, and CWB towards the organization, and CWB towards the individual. Moreover, CSEs prospectively predicted within-person differences in task performance and CWB towards the organization, whereas the reversed effect did not hold. These findings tentatively suggest that state CSEs predict performance, rather than the other way around

How to Evaluate Choice and Promise Neighborhoods

Offers a framework for evaluations of placed-based, comprehensive community initiatives with service saturation and multi-dimensional goals. Outlines core questions; approaches such as performance management or theory of change; and strategy components