An approach to designing diagnostic/prescriptive staff development programs for bilingual education, in which bilingual education is viewed as an innovation in the process of change, was explored. The aims were to: provide a method for defining bilingual programs in progress and determining the degree of implementation; determine teacher concerns;…

A stratified random sample of educators from the 1,827 schools in Florida with one or more full-time media specialists was surveyed in order to determine which of the 62 competencies for media specialists proposed by the Florida Department of Education Council on Teacher Education were considered essential. Respondents were sent an initial…

A setting is described in which an evaluation was used with significant impacts on policies and programs. Some of those impacts are delineated, types of utilization employed by staff within the system are illustrated, and conditions under which the evaluation was conducted to obtain such a high level of use are discussed. In the 1979-80 school…

Two reports chronicle accomplishments of the James Barry-Robinson Institute, a project designed to serve learning disabled (LD) and emotionally disturbed (ED) adolescent male dropouts by helping to increase their employability through special education, career guidance, and social skills training. Both reports are formative evaluations. In the…

To gauge reactions to the developmental testing of the broadcast component of an Arts Foundation Course, 18 members of the team identified as either producer or academic on a television or radio program tested were sent questionnaires containing open response type questions. In addition, the views of members of the Institute of Educational…

This report describes the planning, implementation, and outcomes of the first phase of a project to create and implement computer-based materials for a problem-oriented curriculum in a training program for physician assistants. It examines the underlying causes of the project's failure to achieve the Phase I objectives, and documents them as…

The use of photography as an evaluation and research tool is discussed, with an emphasis on an evaluative study of the ESSENCE environmental science curriculum project. The camera was used in site-visits in an attempt to portray the workings of the project and to convey a meaningful understanding of the curriculum as it was actually used in the…

The project described is a renewal of earlier work on Individualized Instruction for Data Access (IIDA), a program designed at Drexel University to aid users in searching a database with the computer acting as assistant. This quarterly report discusses the evaluation of IIDA through user interaction. Two types of evaluation were performed:…

This discussion of the use of citation frequency data in judging a cluster or an entire collection of journals in academic libraries discusses the rationale for this methodology, and illustrates its application by examining citation counts in ISI's Journal Citation Reports (JCR) for periodicals in the area of communication research. The…

Guidelines are given for program testing and verification to ensure quality software for the programmer working alone in a computing environment with limited resources. The emphasis is on verification as an integral part of the software development. Guidance includes developing and planning testing as well as the application of other verification…

This review of the state of educational evaluation, which is directed to both those who produce and those who consume evaluation data, suggests that certain prevalent evaluation practices are seriously out of step with, and inappropriate for, current mainstream instructional activity. Evaluation is recommended as not merely an appendage to…

This appendix to the Mathematical Problem Solving Project "Module Development and Formative Evaluation" contains trials 1 and 2 of the Organizing Lists quiz. Editorial feedback from teachers on the Organizing Lists booklet is given for trials 1 and 2. Editorial feedback from teachers on the Organizing Lists problem deck is given for…

A formative goal-free evaluation was conducted to assess products (documents) developed after the first year of a federally funded project. Fifteen packets of sixty-six documents were rated by an external panel of five judges, using a checklist developed for the evaluation. An intermediary between the panel and the goal-free evaluator interviewed…

This paper uses five case studies of unskilled writers at the college level to provide insights into the composing process. Each student's writing process was tape-recorded and observed by the instructor in four sessions. The tapes and written observations were charted and analyzed for exhibited behavior patterns in comparison to the written…

The purpose of this paper is to: (1) discuss the reasons for applying the experimental method to program evaluation; (2) review the basic elements of the experimental method; (3) illustrate refinements and variants of the experimental method with examples from program evaluation in the social sciences; (4) describe ways in which funding directives…