Stakeholder Needs Lead to Evaluation Questions
The identification of stakeholders and their needs is essential for the confirmative evaluation plan as an integral part of the adequate assessment. The formulation of questions regarding each of the needs is also important to ensure that stakeholders will be selected properly and met their responsibilities. In particular, the following four stakeholders are considered: field experts, Campus Dean, and learning resource center (LRC) assistant, staff, and students. Table 1 presents all the mentioned components and discusses them in detail.
Table 1. Stakeholder Needs Lead to Evaluation Questions.
Resources Required
The consideration of resources is one more important area of the confirmative evaluation plan. It allows preplanning all the necessary items, materials, and people, the overall analysis of which will be beneficial for determining whether the identified educational program is effective or not. Four resources will be discussed in this paper, including staff, data collection, time, and management assistance. The combination of the mentioned resources seems to make sure that all issues will be covered in terms of the confirmative evaluation.
The first resource of staff refers to the University’s employees who are responsible for preparing learning sessions, providing tools and strategies, and monitoring the successful implementation of all planned lessons (Burgess, 2014). Most importantly, staff must utilize the advising dashboard and training modules by putting relevant information, thus making it available to both students and teachers. Staff members should also control the cooperation between the Campus Dean, LRC assistant, field experts, and students (Burgess, 2014). In other words, the role of the staff is also identified by timely responses to students’ requests and monitoring of the notification system.
The second resource is associated with data collection needs. In particular, it is of great importance to interview students before entering the program and after it to determine their level of academic development. It is possible to suggest that open-ended questions with their focus on expressing any related ideas, concerns, and recommendations are the most pertinent data collection method (Mertens, 2015). In addition to revealing students’ attitudes regarding the given program, a survey or a quiz seems to be useful to compare their initial and ultimate awareness of their field of interest. The integrated information based on interviews and surveys will provide both qualitative and quantitative data that will determine the level of students’ performance during the program as well as any improvements or drawbacks achieved in the context of this summer learning.
Furthermore, time should also be noted as one of the key resources. Each of the stages of the proposed confirmative evaluation will be time-consuming as the detailed preparation is the key to success. The development of pre- and post-questionnaires as well as surveys will take significant time. More to the point, the subsequent data collection procedures will also require time to gather, analyze, integrate, and interpret them, focusing on the role of each of the effectiveness determinants. The alignment of the evaluation results with the existing program and further potential improvements seem to be time-consuming due to the amount of data to be processed and compared.
Last but not least, the resource of management assistance is required to ensure proper support. The vice-president along with the vice-provost should be contacted, and their approval should be received. The admission officer and manager as well as the abovementioned stakeholders should be supportive during data collection and analysis. It should also be taken into account that the local and international organizations should be attracted to the given program and provide additional funding. With this in mind, the source of the budget should be determined, and it may consist of the university’s funds, governmental support, and contributions from the organizations promoting continuous adult learning. Thus, a set of the resource is necessary to provide a comprehensive confirmative evaluation of the summer educational program for adults.
References
Burgess, R. G. (2014). Education research and evaluation: For policy and practice? New York, NY: Routledge.
Mertens, D. M. (2015). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.