You began your Course Project by identifying a program within your specialization needing improvement or change and designing a plan to evaluate that program. With all that you have considered and begun planning in order to implement change, in this module, you consider the indicators and criteria to evaluate your program and the steps needed to implement its evaluation. My area of specialization is early childhood.
For Parts 3 and 4 of your Course Project, you will develop an evaluation tool for your selected program and an action plan to implement your tool in the future.
To prepare:
Review the Giancola (2014) resource and read the Jayaratne (2016) and Henson (2016) articles in the Learning Resources. Reflect on the process of preparing for and developing the tools and plans needed for an effective program evaluation.
Review the evaluation tools highlighted by this module’s Learning Resources and research other possible evaluation tools that would fit the needs of your specialization.
Develop a draft of an evaluation tool to measure the effectiveness of your identified program using at least three of the quality indicators you identified in Part 2 of your Course Project in Module 3.
Reflect on the measurable criteria for each indicator. What would it look like to be performing at the highest level on this indicator? What would it look like to be emerging or lacking on this indicator?
Review the Action Plan templates in this module’s Learning Resources and research other possible templates that would fit the needs of your specialization. Develop an action plan for how to implement your program evaluation tool in the future. Include the following in your action plan and add to it as you see fit for your program:
Program goals
Action steps to meet those goals
Who will complete the action steps?
When will the action steps be completed?
Resources need to complete the action steps
Data collection to inform the action steps
By Day 7 of Week 8
Add the following two parts to your Course Project paper:
Part 3: Evaluation Tool
Write 1–2 pages that include the following:
A rationale for each of the quality indicators you selected for your evaluation tool. Be sure to support your rationales with program information, goals, and data as well as research.
An explanation of the validity and reliability of your identified, measurable criteria and how they will accurately evaluate the effectiveness of the identified quality indicators
An explanation of the program evaluation research that supports the way you created your tool
Attach your Program Evaluation Tool as Appendix A of your Course Project paper.
Part 4: Action Plan
Write 1–2 pages that include the following:
Describe how your action plan will support your program evaluation.
Explain how you will continue with the ongoing program evaluation, including how you will collect data, interpret results, modify action steps, and disseminate the information to other stakeholders.
Describe how this process can create meaningful change that will increase the effectiveness of your identified program