My reflection on Evaluation for Effective Practice

Investigate evaluation theory and processes in your context.
As teachers we are always in the process of evaluating our own practice so this topic not something new to me. However, I paid more attention to the ones that were done within educational context, like Katie’s and Dana’s topic. Though I was interested in other areas like Alex and Richael’s ones I did not follow them closely because of the time restriction. Once I submit last entry I’m going to look at other’s project for my own benefit.
We, at the learning support centre started a research project last year to look at evidence of best practice of learning advisors. We had advisors who are comfortable using quantitative measures and some who are experienced in qualitative methods. This course helped me to develop my knowledge and confidence in using mixed methods that would add validly and reliability to any research.

Demonstrate evidence of reflective learning about the process of evaluation
I intended to use interviews and focus groups as my data collection methods that would shed more light on this project. I was aware that I had to record interviews and transcribe the data and I did not have time to go through the process. So I went on easy options. When I look back my reflective journal entries I could see what went well, what didn’t, why and most of all how I could have done things differently. I value the process I went through than the final product. It is a big learning curve for me.

Discusses and critiques the findings of their evaluation project
I posted my need analysis questionnaire on my blog and modified the questions according to the feedback I received. Then I posted my draft evaluation project on pbworks and gave the link on my blogs so that others could read and critique it. However, not many people had accessed my report as I was late to complete. I didn’t do a good job of maintaining an ongoing blog with the findings but my draft covers the discussion of main findings. The recommendations could have been presented in bullet points to make it precise and clear. The concept proved workable and the good news is that I was already approached by another satellite campus lecturer who asked me for a similar type of service to her department. .
I am hoping that the recommendations will be actioned by the management and I have the opportunity to continue the ‘online support’ to distance students.

Critiques at least two other evaluation projects of participants in the course
As I mentioned previously, I did not commit much time reading the evaluation project on corporate sectors or other unfamiliar areas as I needed more time to process the information. Education field is my familiar route so I followed them and commented on Katie’s and Dana’s blog.

Evaluation Report

Hi all
I have completed my report and it's ready for you to view. Please feel free to read and add your comments. Here is the link:
http://milyas.pbworks.com/w/page/34132631/Elearning-Evaluation




Enjoy your holiday!
Best Wishes from
Mareena

Analysing data

I want to call it a success! 87 students took part in my need analysis survey for the Wimba project (Normally they run away when they hear the word ‘survey’). As I was planning to offer online support to our remote campus students, I wanted to know if they have computers at home with Internet access. The survey result looks positive and 98 % of them had computers at home with internet connection. I also wanted to know how confident they were using the computer and 96% of them showed varying levels of confident in using computers (just ok-45.2%, confident-35.7%, extremely confident-15.5%) and only 3.6% mentioned that they were extremely nervous about using computers. Majority of them (98%) said that they would like to get help via the internet to improve their English. Almost equal number of students indicated that they need help with all areas of English such as reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary and grammar. I offered writing workshops to different classes and small groups through Wimba and got the students to do a short poll after the sessions. I will come back with the poll result soon.

Where were you Aucklanders?

You missed a good lunch with our special guest Bronwyn on Tuesday 9. The 'faceless' people that I've had contact with all these days became 'real'. Katie, Misha, Dana... are we the only Aucklanders on the course? Bad luck people, you not only missed the food but 1:1 face to face feedback about the evaluation plan... It was quite useful Bronwyn. Thanks for your time.Lovey meeting you Katie and Misha. Good luck with your reports!
Cheers
Mareena

Sha-E-fest 2010

Just returned from sha-E-fest 2010 conference at Waikato Institute of Technology and learned a lot. I was particularly interested in Sarah Stewart’s workshop ‘The best things in life are free’. She mentioned that Bronwyn Hegarty was the co presenter of the workshop but couldn’t attend the conference for some reasons. Genuinely speaking, that was a wonderful collection of free programmes put together for tecno newbies. I need to create accounts and play around with those programmes to get the benefit of it. Thanks for the effort Bronwyn. I enjoyed it.

Need analysis

I have developed a need analysis survey using ‘surveymonkey’ and posted the link on my project page for people to access so that I can have some feedback before doing the actual survey. Here is the link if you haven’t visited my project page. Click here to take survey

You can see the overview of my project here

Catching up

I had gone away on bereavement leave for two weeks and just got back to work today. Unfortunately, I did not have internet facilities to keep up with the discussions/ readings. I had a hectic time at the funeral house and hardly had any sleep. My return journey was a nightmare with 15 hrs travel and 10 hrs transit! At the Auckland airport I waited extra two hours as I lost my baggages… I arrived yesterday and had to come to work today though still feeling jetlag…
I don’t know where to start now. I’m far behind the course. I wanted to start my need analysis this week but the ESOL students are on term break and won’t be back till October.
I’m attending the e-fest conference in Hamilton next week on the 27/28 September. Anyone else from our course taking part?