William Cope
May Thet Khine Nyein
Obie Ellmoos.png "Nathan Luise")
Nathan Luise
Olive SabiitiAssessment for Learning MOOC’s Updates
Evaluation in Education
In every walk of life the process of evaluation takes place in one or the other form. If the evaluation process is eliminated from human life then perhaps the aim of life may be lost. It is only through evaluation that one can discriminate between good and bad. The whole cycle of social development revolves around the evaluation process. Education is considered as an investment in human beings in terms of development of human resources, skills, motivation, knowledge and the like. Evaluation helps to build an educational programme, assess its achievements and improve upon its effectiveness. It serves as an in-built monitor within the programme to review the progress in learning from time to time. It also provides valuable feedback on the design and the implementation of the programme. Thus, evaluation plays a significant role in any educational programme. Evaluation plays an enormous role in the teaching-learning process. It helps teachers and learners to improve teaching and learning. Evaluation is a continuous process and a periodic exercise. In education how much a child has succeeded in his aims, can only be determined through evaluation. Thus there is a close relationship between evaluation and aims.
In learning, it contributes to formulation of objectives, designing of learning experiences and assessment of learner performance. Besides this, it is very useful to bring improvement in teaching and curriculum. It provides accountability to the society, parents, and to the education system.
We need to evaluate an educational program to gauge its efficacy as well as its usefulness/merit. Needs assessment is carried out when a program is established first. That initial assessment criteria be revisited from time to time to improve the effectiveness of the program.
To evaluate most effectively we clearly need to set the ground rules of the following:
1. What it is that we are evaluating: this determines the scope of the evaluation and sets a timeline.
a. Are students meeting the goals
b. Are teachers/educators able to teach with efficiency and effectiveness?
c. Is the curriculum effective?
d. Is the program evolving with changing times (keeping abreast of technology and educational policies?)
e. Is the right amount of budget allotted?
2. Who is involved: For an educational program, stakeholders can be the students, their guardians, teachers, program directors, curriculum makers, test centers, and even policy makers.
3. How we are doing it: How do we conduct interview and what kind of data do we collect
4. Carrying out the evaluation: Do we just involve external evaluators? Which stakeholders can give us unbiased views into what is going on.
5. Using the results to improve the program, change educational policies, and call for better legislation in certain cases.
Evaluation is a multi-disciplined approach and evaluators can come from fields as diverse such as psychology, sociology, educational administration, data science, social sciences, and so on. According to Dr. Jennifer Greene, from UIUC, the best way to collect useful data is for external evaluators to partner with local experts and even volunteers. The local context is extremely important for data to be meaningful. The various types of metrics need to be properly delineated and various stakeholders can come together and provide concrete data points for each type.
An important as aspect of an educational program is whether students are meeting the desired goals. These metrics and the way to collect them need to be carefully vetted. Student grades are not always the best way to determine the success of the program and the effectiveness of an evaluation program lies in how best it can come up with a system to gauge whether the program is a success or not. For example, how are students assessed, how qualified are the teachers, what is the student-teacher ratio, whether the program is practicum-based—all these are very important points to ponder on.
Eventually, the success of the evaluation lies in whether the evaluation was able to persuade changes in policies and legislation, if need be. In fact, as the field of program evaluation evolves, the role of the evaluator is transitioning from being just technical to more of an advisory role.
Acknowledgements:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000066120
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-58689-2_11
https://www.ericdigests.org/pre-9217/programs.htm
Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP) in real-time evaluation (RTE).
I agree that evaluation of programs is a necessity especially when considering whether or not the monies are justified. Still, it seems that there is a continual system of evaluations and assessments and one must wonder if this merry go round is effective.
I agree that evaluation of programs is a necessity especially when considering whether or not the monies are justified. Still, it seems that there is a continual system of evaluations and assessments and one must wonder if this merry go round is effective.
Testing and evaluation is important as an assessment process that can define whether we are teaching what the children need to learn in order to be skillfull when growing up. But I think evaluation should and can be removed for intelligence purposes, and need to be more focus on holistic skill for the 21st century.