With today's technology, Extension professionals have a variety of tools available for program evaluation. This article describes an innovative platform called VoiceThread that has been used in many classrooms but also is useful for conducting virtual focus group research. I explain how this tool can be used to collect qualitative participant…

Honors programs are rare in Latin America, and in Chile they were unknown before 2003. At the Universidad Austral de Chile, an interdisciplinary group of scholars linked to environmental studies put forward a pilot project for implementing a new experience in higher education. Challenged by an educational environment where (1) apathy and…

Over the past 14 years, AEA's Oral History Project Team (Robin Lin Miller, Jean A. King, Valerie Caracelli, and Melvin M. Mark) has conducted interviews with individuals who have made signal contributions to evaluation theory and practice, tracing their professional development and contextualizing their work within the social and political…

In this article the authors present the full interview conducted with George Grob in 2011 at the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Conference in Anaheim, CA. George Grob is former Director of the Office of Evaluation and Inspections in the Office of Inspector General. Prior to serving in that Office, he was Director of Planning and Policy…

Through the Innovative Professional Development (iPD) Challenge, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in helping school districts and networks redesign their professional development systems to serve educators better and improve student performance. MDRC's evaluation of the iPD Challenge involves case studies and multiple rounds of…

The Robert Bowne Foundation (RBF), which published "Afterschool Matters" from 2003 to 2008 and continues to fund the journal and related projects, is closing in December. "Afterschool Matters" sat down with Lena Townsend, executive director, to talk about RBF's legacy and continuing influence on literacy work in afterschool…

In the Innovative Professional Development (iPD) Challenge, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in helping school districts and networks redesign their instructional support systems to better support educators in increasing student success. This Issue Focus, the second in a series, presents early reflections from MDRC's evaluation…

Funders, policymakers, and program leaders recognize the value of high-quality evidence. To make good use of a program evaluation, initiatives must contend with a set of fundamental questions first. Some of these are about the initiative itself: What outcomes does it seek to affect? Are daily activities in line with long-term goals? Others are…

Program evaluation is a process of carefully collecting information in order to make informed decisions to strengthen specific components of a given program. The type of evaluation an institution decides to undertake depends on the purpose as well as on the information the institution wants to find out about its program. Self-evaluation represents…

Museums often evaluate various aspects of their audiences' experiences, be it what they learn from a program or how they react to an exhibition. Each museum program or exhibition has its own set of goals, which can drive what an evaluator studies and how an evaluation evolves. When designing an evaluation, data collection methods are purposefully…

On November 19, 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would invest $290 million to support effective teaching as a means to ensure all students receive the education they need to succeed in high school and beyond. The foundation made six-year grants to support four Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching (IP) sites…

The project development school idea in Japan started in the late 1970s. Both public and private schools can become project schools. Public schools' districts and private schools' boards develop the project plan and submit the application to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Once approved, the project school…

The authors describe how Southern Utah University has integrated the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Voluntary Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program as an experiential servicelearning activity for over a decade and a half. First, we describe the value of experiential servicelearning. Second, we detail the program, its oversight, its student…

On September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day), the C3 Framework was released under the title "The College, Career and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History." The C3 Project Director and lead writer was NCSS member Kathy Swan, who is…

Developed in cooperation with the World Wildlife Fund, "Taking Action" inspires ideas and provides models for conducting effective environmental projects--projects that dynamically engage students from start to finish. From adopting species to protecting habitats to saving energy and creating publications, this guide will help educators plan,…