Testing students once a year, with data reported many months later, is like using an autopsy to determine how to help a patient, says Cindy Ambrose, chief academic officer of the Horry County Schools in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. In Horry County and many other districts around the country, assessment that monitors vital signs on an ongoing…

In this contribution we describe a short development course for in-service physics teachers. The course structure and materials are based on the results of educational research, and its main objective is to provide in-service teachers with a first contact with the active learning strategy "Tutorials in Introductory Physics," developed by…

The September 2006 report "A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education," by the commission appointed by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, identifies many areas of improvement for U.S. higher education and specifies numerous recommendations (totaling more than 50, according to some counts) for consideration by…

Consider test data, a specified set of dichotomous skills measured by the test, and an IRT cognitive diagnosis model (ICDM). Statistical estimation of the data set using the ICDM can provide examinee estimates of mastery for these skills, referred to generally as attributes. With such detailed information about each examinee, future instruction…

Institutions partner for a variety of reasons (Russell and Flynn, 2000), but resource sharing often serves as a key motivating factor (Brumbach and Villadsen, 2002; Keener, Carrier, and Meaders, 2002). Such was the impetus for development of the Connected Campuses of Technology (CCT), a partnership among five colleges of technology. The…

"The Electric Company" ("TEC") television show won the hearts of children because it made learning fun. Thirty years later, the iconic show has returned with the goal of not only teaching literacy, but also numeracy (the ability to work with and understand numbers) and mathematics vocabulary in a fun, entertaining, and engaging…

The booklet describes the conceptual approach and operation of the evaluation plan used by Project CAST (Community and School Together), a community-ased career education program for handicapped students. Three levels of evaluation are proposed for providing data for both formative and summative evaluation; these levels are: (1) effort evaluation,…

This guide provides evaluators interested in new methods with a framework for determining the feasibility, utility, and effectiveness of the methods in field settings. To accomplish this intent, the body of this guide contains discussions of five checklists. Three of the checklists are to be used before a trial to determine the feasibility of one…

Reviewed is the development and evaluation of the instructional quality inventory (IQI), a systematic methodology for reviewing the three major products of the Instructional Systems Design process--objectives, test items, and instruction--before conducting student tryouts. The empirically based instructional design support system aids developers…

The various attempts made to evaluate the course in fundamentals of library science at Drexel University Graduate School of Library Science are assessed. (PF)

A student services--data information system was designed and implemented at the University of Iowa to determine and analyze process criteria for counseling activities in terms of effort, cost and function. (Author)

This paper explores the impact of the Texas Teacher Appraisal System (TTAS) through an analysis of interviews with 24 high school English teachers. The first part of the paper discusses the development of the TTAS and the second section describes the study. The teachers were asked if and how the TTAS had affected their teaching performance, what…

Noting that formative research on educational computer software has traditionally focused on comprehensibility, appeal, and usefulness, this report argues that these three elements tell us very little about the actual role that the formative researcher plays in the instructional design process. This paper outlines the complexity of the tasks and…

Described in this process evaluation are the first-year efforts to provide a specialized staff within the Bexar County District Attorney's Office, San Antonio, Texas, to perform advocacy functions for abused and neglected children involved in cases going through the criminal justice system. The report discusses how well the staff met the three…

Based on the premise that instructional development is a change process and the instructional developer is a change agent, this chapter begins by considering the literature of planned change as applied to the process of instructional development. It is argued that instructional product evaluation must include both formative and summative…