This article provides insight into how an adequate approach to selecting methods can establish credible and actionable evidence. The authors offer strategies to effectively support Extension professionals, including program developers and evaluators, in being more deliberate when selecting appropriate qualitative and quantitative methods. In…

The first step in the Validity and Reliability Study summarizes the history and purpose of California's quality rating and improvement system (QRIS), reviews findings from other QRIS evaluation studies, and describes the approach to validating the system in California. The majority of this report focuses on providing context for the California…

Academic development (AD) programmes for students not complying with the entrance requirements of mainstream programmes in science have been running at a number of universities in South Africa. In this study we contribute to the debate on criteria for the success of AD programmes, specifically in the context of research-intensive universities in…

Universities in Europe have been playing an increasingly important role in the institutional evaluation of political and social systems for the last thirty years. Their major contribution to those processes of accountability has been to add methods and safeguards of evaluative research. In this paper we report an illustration of how evaluative…

Currently, the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in education does not conclusively demonstrate significant effects on learning. However, not all ICT usage models are designed to affect student outcomes. Therefore, to accurately study the impact of ICT, the concept of an educational programme supported by ICT must first be…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the usability of a remote learning system in its initial development phase, using a quantitative usability evaluation method through Markov models. Design/methodology/approach: The paper opted for an exploratory study. The data of interest of the research correspond to the possible accesses of users…

This paper presents the rationale behind the utilization of a Moodle Learning Management System for the facilitation of a blended learning approach in the Informatics department. The authors present and analyze the steps followed in order to replace the prior decentralized organizational structure of the courses, which consisted of a multitude of…

Fidelity may be defined as the extent to which delivery of an intervention adheres to the protocol or program model originally developed. Fidelity measurement has increasing significance for evaluation, treatment effectiveness research, and service administration. Yet few published studies using fidelity criteria provide details on the…

In appraising the Individually Prescribed Instruction system, three sources of information were utilized: a main instrument, the Degree of Implementation Study, and two additional investigations, the Report of Student Progress and the report of the school visitation monitors. To determine the degree of implementation, a sample of the student…

Educational evaluation and design are discussed. Five essential steps in evaluation are: (1) define educational objectives in behavioral terms, (2) translate the objective into descriptions of behavior, (3) identify situations in which the designated behavior can be observed, (4) establish an interpretative device which can measure the desired…

Summative evaluations have often been undertaken to determine the impact of educational programs on student academic achievement employing a quasi-experimental design. The summative finding is expected to be less misleading if a statistical model is performed on a dataset including a sound matched sample as a control group. This is because an…

Discusses some of the most useful and most commonly used analytical tools for evaluating state school finance programs. (JG)

Focusing on the evaluation of outcomes ("cost benefit analysis") in large scale social action programs, this paper examines issues relating to the adequacy of theory and methodology as well as the impact of different types of persons (academics, politicians, program administrators) involved in the evaluation process. Problems of evaluation…

Evaluation is as basic to professional development as it is to education. Unfortunately, systematic evaluations of professional development programs are rarely, if ever, undertaken. Professional development has become polluted by extraordinarily presumptuous rhetoric about the intrinsic value of "development." In the recent flurry of…

GUIDELINES ARE PRESENTED FOR THE PREPARATION OF THE REPORT EVALUATING THE TOTAL MISSOURI TITLE I PROGRAM AND INDIVIDUAL TITLE I PROJECTS. INSTRUCTIONS ARE GIVEN FOR PRESENTING TABULAR DATA IN PART I OF THE REPORT, FOR DEVELOPING EVALUATION DESIGNS AND CRITERIA, AND FOR COMPUTING QUARTILE POINTS. IN THE EVALUATION OF THE SEPARATE PROJECTS…