What can teachers do in their classrooms to help students prepare for a high-stakes, standardized, multiple-choice reading test without sacrificing what they know to be best practice? Decreasing class sizes or other solutions that require substantial changes in school finance are not usually realistic options. This article outlines five…

The Open University (OU) is the UK's largest university, with over 200,000 people studying, part time and at a distance, a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses and packs. Research and development carried out at the OU's Centre for Outcomes-Based Education (COBE), has provided a new way of enabling students to be accredited at higher…

Purpose: This paper reports on the adaptation of an existing interpretive and critical research methods course in nursing for postgraduate student health professionals in a School of Population Health and Clinical Practice. Methods: A cyclical approach of inquiry, reflection and planning was undertaken by the teaching team to make changes to the…

This presentation addresses issues of faculty evaluation in the university context and the effective use and usefulness of portfolios. A section on portfolio content validity asks about the right things to include and briefly discusses scholarship, teaching, and service components. A section on criterion-related validity asks whether rival…

This paper discusses a formative evaluation method by which to assess World-Wide-Web (WWW) documents. Also presented are the results from a pilot evaluation which examined users' interactions with Web documents and the effects of providing "document maps" to guide users to specific information. A video-split screen technique was used to…

A portfolio is a meaningful collection of student work that tells the story of student achievement or growth. There are two basic reasons for doing portfolios--assessment or instruction. Benefits for using portfolios in instruction include the development of students self-reflection, critical thinking, responsibility for learning, and content area…

Research has shown that an effective assessment of workplace literacy programs requires both formative and summative evaluations. Workplace literacy program impact is best measured using a mixture of standard assessment tests and custom-designed instruments. A broader conception of adult literacy learning can be assessed by using interviews and…

The Simplifying Conditions Method (SCM) is a set of guidelines for task analysis and sequencing of instructional content under the Elaboration Theory (ET). This article introduces the fundamentals of SCM and presents the findings from a formative research study on SCM. It was conducted in two distinct phases: design and instruction. In the first…

The Department of Nursing at Oak Hill Hospital, Spring Hill (Florida) did not have a measurement instrument for patient evaluation of hospital nursing services. An instrument to measure patient satisfaction with nursing was developed and validated. Criteria identified through a literature search were reviewed, modified, and validated by a…

This publication is the result of a research and development project that involved the development of formative teacher evaluation plans at three sites: Guilford County Schools, Greensboro (North Carolina); Richland School District 2, Columbia (South Carolina); and Surry County Schools, Dobson (North Carolina). The publication is intended as a…

This document, which is intended for schools preparing to undergo an evaluation as part of the Distance Education and Training Council's (DETC's) accreditation process, details the process of writing a self-evaluation report (SER). In the introduction, the SER is defined as the heart of the DETC accreditation process and is described as a road map…

The chapters commissioned for this book describe key aspects of evaluation methodology as they are practiced in a Canadian context, providing representative illustrations of recent developments in evaluation methodology as it is currently applied. The following chapters are included: (1) "Program Evaluation with Limited Fiscal and Human…

This introduction to Phase II, of a four-phase study, provides information on the background of the California Educational Technology Assessment Project (CETAP), the legislative history and rationale for the study, and the general evaluation plan. Phase II presents an in-depth formative and summative assessment of six major programs funded by AB…

This report on Phase III, of a four-phase study, provides an analysis of the impact of California Technology Assistance Programs. The first section of this report provides the background of the California Educational Technology Assessment Project (CETAP), an overview of programs studied, and a summary of the evaluation plan. Sections two and three…

The military theme at Northeast Law, Public Service, and Military High School in Kansas City, Missouri, was evaluated during its second year of implementation (the 1990-91 school year). After a shaky start, the second year brought increased stability to the program. Program objectives were in place, and all military theme staff had been hired by…